


Traduttore, Traditore

by Signy1



Category: Hogan's Heroes (TV 1965)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Origin Story, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:15:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 28
Words: 74,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23938270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Signy1/pseuds/Signy1
Summary: When attempting to make a man's acquaintance, heavy cell doors and cement walls are child's play compared to language barriers. But when the men in question are Cpls LeBeau and Newkirk, where *would* they meet but in the cooler? Two prisoners, both emotionally raw, are going to need each other if they're going to have any chance of surviving... whether they like it or not. They may be POWs, but their war is not over. It's just beginning. 2019 PBA medalist. Revised/reposted from FF.net.
Comments: 16
Kudos: 31





	1. Chapter 1

Dialogue in regular print is to be understood as being spoken in English. Dialogue in _italics_ is to be understood as perfect, fluent French. Dialogue consisting of horribly-phoneticized attempts at very bad French are to be read as such; Newkirk is not, at this stage in the game, particularly good at any language other than his own. **Bold** text is German. The title phrase, ‘Traduttore, Traditori’ is Italian… because what we really needed was another language… and means ‘The translator is a traitor.’

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

The small man had put up one hell of a fight, and Newkirk took off his metaphorical hat to him, but these sort of affairs only ever ended the one way, and the sound of the cell door slamming shut on the newest addition to their happy little family was appallingly final. It wasn’t exactly the sort of thing that improved with familiarity, but the first time in the solitary cells was a special sort of horror. Poor sod. 

The guard’s jackbooted footsteps echoed on the concrete as he stormed away. Krauts never seemed to walk if they could help it, not if they could stamp, stride or strut instead. Was it the boots that made a man want to stomp angrily around, Newkirk wondered, or was it simply that the sort of man who wore them was the type to stomp anyway? Chicken or the egg, really. Which came first, the Nazi or the nasty?

Tabling that little bit of philosophical inquiry for later—God knew there was plenty of ‘later’ to look forward to in here—he took a deep breath and shouted as loudly as he could.

“Oi! Kriegie, can you hear me? You all right in there?”

 _“What did you call me, you English barbarian?”_ LeBeau would be the first to admit that it wasn’t the friendliest greeting of which he was capable, but it had been a truly horrible day, and he felt entitled to a little show of ill-temper, especially given the fact that there was a fairly good chance that the Englishman wouldn’t understand him in any case. And shouting at someone—anyone—was oddly satisfying.

“Anglay! Right, I know that one. That’s ‘English,’ that is. Parley-voo anglay?”

“ _Good God. I knew the English were illiterates, but this is ridiculous.”_ LeBeau scowled at the wall and the voice wafting through it. “ _Leave me alone, you buffoon; I’m not interested in anything you have to say. And stop butchering my language; France has suffered enough from this war without that final insult!”_

“Charming. Sounds like a no on the English. Guess we’ll have to start from scratch. Bonjore, kriegie. Common tally-voo?”

Silence.

“Yeah, well, kriegie, it’s hard, I know. We’ve all been there. Can’t blame you for not wanting to talk about it. That’s all right.”

Silence.

Newkirk soldiered on. “Look, I can’t keep calling you ‘kriegie,’ now can I? You’ve got to have a name… wait, I remember the word. Apellay… er, no. Jim apell Newkirk, all right? Neewwkirrrk. How about you, then? I mean, quell, um, quell apellay-voo?”

More silence… then, finally, “ _I’ve heard parrots who could speak better than that._ Your French is a crime.”

Newkirk chuckled. “Daresay it is, and you’ve already heard most of what I know. You’ll have to teach me more.”

“Why should I?”

“You have anything better to do? Don’t know about you, but I sure don’t have any pressing appointments on my calendar.”

LeBeau thought about that, conceded the basic truth of it without surrendering an iota of his disinclination to play tutor to an English fool. His curiosity, however… “You call me ‘kriegie.’ What does it mean, this word?”

“Oh, that. Serves me right for bringing a third language into the mix. It’s not an insult, honest it’s not. It’s Kraut for ‘prisoner of war,’ that’s all. You and me, everyone else here at the Hitler Hilton, we’re all kriegies. Short for ‘kriegsgefangener.’ Jerries sure do like words that all but break your jaw trying to say them, don’t they?”

LeBeau understood perhaps a third of that, but he nodded once, lowering his hackles. Not an insult. Not a particularly flattering truth, perhaps, but he could hardly deny his status. “I see. _Oui_ , I am a prisoner. Free French Air Force. Corporal Louis LeBeau.”

“RAF, Corporal Peter Newkirk. Pleasure to meet you, mate, even if I can’t say much for the circumstances.”

“ _A pleasure to meet you, too, I suppose._ ” LeBeau smiled, somewhat begrudgingly, but sincerely. He might be trapped in this dungeon waiting to be shot, questioned, or tortured, probably not in that order, with his only companion being an Englishman who was doing to his language what the _Boche_ were doing to his country, but perhaps talking was preferable to staring at the ceiling. “You must learn to speak correctly. Not ‘bonjore.’ _Bonjour._ Say it.”

A week or two later, as they got more comfortable with the languages, and were well on their way to creating a French-English hybrid that would have given a linguist apoplexy, they’d learned a bit more about each other. LeBeau, for instance, was a chef. Newkirk was a magician. (He didn’t feel any particular need to mention any of his other talents. At least, not yet.) LeBeau was Parisian; Newkirk was London to the core. It transpired that they held amazingly similar opinions on girls, Germans, girls, their current residence, and girls. Oh, and, as the guards found out, they both liked to argue.

They argued a lot.

A _lot_.

“Newkirk, you are _a complete barbarian,_ and probably _out of your mind_ as well _._ How could you possibly _compare a_ _quiche_ to a steak and kidney pie? I am _becoming ill_ just thinking of it. Is there not _a working set of taste buds_ anywhere in _your dreadful country_?”

“Kesker say, LeBeau? Didn’t catch much of that, but what I did hear sounded a bit less than complimentary.”

“ _Dear God_ , Newkirk, that accent! _For the thousandth time_ , idiot, it is ‘ _qu’est-ce que c’est_.’ Not ‘kesker say!’ Are you not listening?”

“Oh, I’m listening, all right, and when you finally get around to making sense, I’ll be waiting right here.”

“ _Making sense? If that’s what we’re waiting for, we’re screwed. I’m still waiting for you to stop spewing bullshit and say something sensible, and, two weeks in, I’m starting to think I’m wasting my time—”_

“Okay, mate, I heard _merde_ in there, which is usually my cue to ignore you till you stop using language that would make your old mum faint—”

The guards exchanged weary glances. One said, “ **How much longer until we can be rid of them? I’m going deaf.** ”

“ **Today is Tuesday, yes? That means… seventeen more days.** ” Richter winced. “ **Perhaps the Kommandant can be persuaded to either shorten their sentence or issue ear plugs to all guards.** ”

“ **Or muzzle the two of them before the entire battalion deserts,** ” Voight growled. “ **The Geneva Convention applies to us, too, after all.** ”

“ **I say we shut them both up. Which one do you want?”**

**“The irritating one.”**

“ **Funny. You take the little one. I’ll handle the Englander.** ”

Richter was halfway to Newkirk’s cell before the other guard could object to the assignment; LeBeau had left a definite impression on him when he had first been brought into camp, and some of the bruises had been visible for a week. The Englander was a pest and a nuisance, but at least he didn’t bite. Usually.

Newkirk scrambled to his feet as the door swung open, his eyes wary. Richter’s hand was already on his truncheon, and when the annals of fluffy teddy bears came to be written, his name would be conspicuous by its absence.

“ **Achtung, Englander**!”

“Yes sir. Achtung-ing as ordered, sir.”

“Silence!” Richter snarled. “You will be silent!”

“Yes sir. Silent, sir.”

“No talking! Too loud! **Verboten**!”

“Right, sir. Verboten. Completely understand, sir; my mum always did say that I couldn’t keep my mouth shut if my life depended on it… which it would seem it does, sir... but I do hope you’ll accept my apologies for the racket, and let bygones be—”

And it might so easily have ended there; a bit of penitent babbling, a bit of cringing to make the man feel important, and hey presto! The guard would have relieved his feelings with a few more shouted orders for quiet and maybe a cuff around the ear, and gone away. Ten months in, Newkirk could have written a book on the care and feeding of Kraut egos.

Maybe he should have. And sent LeBeau a copy. Because from what he could hear of the proceedings, it seemed that LeBeau could have used a bit of expert tutelage. The sounds from the next cell were rapidly graduating from ‘scuffle’ to ‘fracas,’ and that was not going to end well for anyone concerned.

“Kamerad, LeBeau! Say ‘kamerad,’ mate! Diss-le, manetennent!” Newkirk was no longer even pretending to pay attention to the increasingly irritated guard standing in the doorway. Someone down the hall let out a pained yelp; impossible to say who. And it was stupid—suicidal, even—but Newkirk shoved Richter aside and darted into the next cell before he could think better of it.

LeBeau was just picking himself off the ground, mouth bleeding, fists at the ready, and eyes blazing hot enough that by rights he should have set fire to his eyebrows. Voight was doubled over, in no condition to pay much attention to his surroundings; LeBeau didn’t seem to feel that Marquis of Queensbury rules applied, and had taken the phrase ‘hitting below the belt’ entirely literally.

But Voight had backup, and Voight had a firearm, and Voight now had a very good reason to deal with the situation in a lethal fashion. All Newkirk had was a split second’s head start, a self-preservation instinct that had long since gone into hibernation, and a surge of adrenaline; he leapt onto the guard’s back and brought them both crashing to the ground.

Richter, his weapon drawn, was in the doorway a heartbeat later, shouting in rapid German; it was probably something to the effect that they were in deep trouble, and that if they didn’t stop fighting immediately, they’d be in even deeper. Six feet deeper, to be exact.

Newkirk rolled away from Voight, lifted his hands as the German—with, he had to admit, some minor justification—kicked him hard in the gut. “Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Kamerad?” He shot a quick look at LeBeau. “Both of us. Both kamerad. See?”

Richter, who, it would seem, knew a good idea when he saw one, kicked him again, let off another spate of German that was almost certainly not an invitation to tea, and slammed the cell door shut on the two of them.

“ _Are you mad? What is wrong with you, you cretin? You could have been killed!”_

“Sorry, Louie. Try that again, a bit slower, would you?” Newkirk, one arm wrapped around his middle, got to his feet. “Bloody Krauts.”

“You… what did you do that for? Stupid!”

“He’d’ve killed you if I hadn’t distracted him. And then who’d’ve taught me to speak French?” Newkirk forced himself to grin, to keep his voice light. The adrenaline was fading, and it wasn’t leaving anything pleasant behind. “Besides, mate, this way, until the tossers figure out that putting two people into solitary together rather defeats the purpose, we won’t have to wreck our throats shouting.”

“I do not need _a nursemaid or a guardian angel,_ you coward,” LeBeau said, not fooled and not distracted. “If I choose to fight back rather than crawl, I do not need rescue.”

“Yeah, mate, you’d’ve made a brave picture, lying here in your cell with your head a yard from your body. Done old Paris proud, that would—”

That was when LeBeau punched him.

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

Author’s note: This is an expansion of a scene in a previous story. (Freedom, Hanging By A Thread.) It takes place in late 1940, before any of the Americans were even in the war, let alone captured. No knowledge of that story is really necessary; suffice it to say that Newkirk is in pretty bad shape, and LeBeau isn’t much better off. They’re getting off to a somewhat volatile start, but give them some time...

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

*Translated from Newkirkese to French to English. His accent really is appalling.

Parley-voo anglay?— Parlez-vous anglais?— Do you speak English?

Bonjore. Common tally-voo?— Bonjour. Comment allez vous?— Hello. How are you?

Jim apell Newkirk. Quell apellay-voo?— Je m’appelle Newkirk. Quel appellez-vous?— My name is Newkirk. What call you? (If you are not in a POW camp shouting through a cement wall, there are better ways to ask a person’s name. This is not terribly grammatical.)

Kesker say— qu’est-ce que c’est— what’s that

Diss-le manetennent— dis-le, maintenant— say it, now


	2. Chapter 2

As before, plain text is English, _italicized_ is French, **bold** is German. And also as before, Newkirk’s French is still criminally bad, and is glossed at the end of the chapter.

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

In his heart, LeBeau knew that he was being vastly unfair. It wasn’t really even Newkirk he was truly angry with, or at least, he was not the one with whom he was angriest. The list of people with whom he was angry was not short, and of all the people on that ever-increasing list, Newkirk was probably the one who least deserved to be attacked.

LeBeau was angry with the Germans. All of them. Soldiers or civilians, young or old, he wouldn’t have shed a tear if the entire country simply vanished overnight, and the same went for the Vichy collaborators. (Simply vanishing overnight was too good for most of them, in fact, but he was willing to settle for what he could get.) He was angry with his crewmates for being shot down; he was angry with them for dying and leaving him alone. He was angry with himself for having survived when all his friends had not; somehow, it seemed a betrayal. He was angry with God for letting any of it happen.

He was angry with the guard who had barged in to silence him, contemptuous and threatening, and he was angry with himself for letting himself be goaded, and he was angry with Newkirk for saving him, for having had to save him, and for getting himself hurt in the process. The last thing LeBeau needed was another comrade-in-arms to die in his place while he, himself, lived to enjoy the dubious privileges of survivor’s guilt and nightmares.

He had been frightened when the guard had struck him, but then, he had been frightened since the moment his plane had been hit, since the moment of his capture. He was angry with himself for being afraid. He was so desperate for human contact that he had latched onto the only friendly voice he had heard in weeks, and he did so despite himself, because the last thing he wanted was another friend, another ally, another inevitable loss. He was angry with Newkirk for offering a friendship that would only lead to another broken heart. He was angry with himself for reciprocating.

He was angry with Newkirk for groveling before the Germans, for insisting that he grovel as well. He was angry that it had worked. Was this really what his life had become? Cells, chains, barbed wire, and impotent helplessness? Purchasing his life, minute by minute, at the cost of his dignity and his self-respect? Was he becoming, not a defender, but a _liability_ to his country? Never! Death was preferable; better by far that the guard _had_ killed him—and Newkirk had taken that away from him, too!

He was angry, he was ashamed, he was resentful. He was frightened, and he was grieving, and he was guilt-ridden. He was… what was he? No longer a chef, no longer a soldier, no longer free… was he even still LeBeau? He was a prisoner, next best thing to a ghost, entirely at the Nazis’ nonexistent mercy, and he knew even as he lashed out that it was not Newkirk he wanted to hurt.

But there was no one else, ( _no, no one else, he was alone, would always be alone,_ ) and he channeled all the pain, all the misery squarely at a man he knew did not in the least deserve it. And he was angry with himself for that, too.

Newkirk backpedaled a step or two, obviously seeing stars for a moment, but he stayed upright. He wiped his mouth with the back of a hand, glanced at the blood smear, and dismissed it as irrelevant. “All right, then,” he said. His voice was low, calm, and, somehow, suddenly dangerous. The dry amusement, the half-serious hectoring and teasing complaints, all were entirely vanished. “That one was free. A cellwarming gift, shall we say? Next time, well, Katie bar the door, is all.”

LeBeau didn’t understand a word of that, although the message was certainly clear enough; it seemed as though Newkirk was not going to hit him back, which surprised him. He looked—really _looked—_ at the other man for the first time. His first thought was that he looked like death, not even warmed over. He was painfully, cruelly, thin, and two weeks of unshaven beard could not disguise the hollowness of his cheeks or the sunken eyes. His skin was a pallid, unhealthy white, with hints of blue beneath his fingernails and shadowing his eyes. His uniform might have fit, once; now it hung on him like a scarecrow’s rags. There was an odd mixture of desperation and resignation in his eyes, but there was nothing submissive in his body language anymore. It was not—at all—how he had pictured the man when he had been nothing but a voice and an argument, and it was certainly nothing like the cowed prisoner who had been begging for mercy less than five minutes before.

“You’re less than chuffed to be here. Understood. You’re not in the market for a china; fair enough. You’re about ready to throw in the towel. And who am I to stand in your way?” Newkirk shrugged. “You’re hardly the only one, kriegie. It’s your business and none of mine.”

More words he could not really translate with a meaning he could nonetheless understand. One word stood out from the others, though; the sudden demotion from ‘Louie’ back to ‘kriegie’ was like a bucket of ice water, and LeBeau felt the anger draining out of him in the shock of it.

“ _I… I am sorry. I am so sorry,_ ” LeBeau faltered. “ _I don’t know what I was thinking._ ”

Newkirk just smiled. It was a comfortable, familiar mask, and if it didn’t reach his eyes, he didn’t much care. “None, none. _Je_ swee dessulay. You handle your war any way you choose. Not my place to interfere, and I’ll be out of your hair as soon as the next shift figures out I’m in here, like enough. For now… I think I’ll have a bit of a kip. Pleasant dreams, and bone swore.”

With that, he curled himself up in a corner, pillowed his head on his arm, and resolutely closed his eyes.

The real fact of the matter was that he was angry, too. Not exactly with the Frenchman, and it didn’t have anything to do with a mere sock in the jaw. No, he had earned that one fair and square, as far as he was concerned. Nobody ever appreciated being interfered with, and ‘I was only trying to help’ was perhaps the weakest excuse in the book. Frankly, his own hypocrisy was a sour taste in his mouth; he knew damned well that the only reason he was in the cooler at all was because he had failed to sufficiently antagonize a guard into killing him, and he knew that as soon as he got out, he’d probably try again. And if the jackboot had been on the other rib, he’d have been just as angry with LeBeau for trying to save him… and for taking a kick or three that had been meant for him. ‘Hypocrisy’ was putting it mildly.

Prisoners in glass barracks shouldn’t keep other people from throwing stones, or something equally convoluted and nonsensical.

What really irritated him was the simple fact that he had known better. What had he been thinking? He was no kind of hero, no knight in shining armor dashing in with his sword drawn, and the scrappy little Frenchman was no damsel in distress. And even if the other man _wanted_ his help, his protection, which he quite obviously did not, what did Newkirk have to offer? He couldn’t save himself, let alone anyone else. And even if he tried, there were only two possible outcomes; either he’d fail miserably, landing the other man in worse trouble than he’d been in originally, or LeBeau would make the mistake of depending on him, and _then_ he’d fail miserably and get them both killed.

Better to try to go back to the way things had been. No more bilingual yelling, no more little chats. They’d probably shove him back in his own cell in the morning, maybe tack on another few days for ‘escaping,’ and he and LeBeau would never need to bother each other again. Much safer all around. He curled himself in a bit tighter, suppressing a pang, and told himself that he was better off alone. Bad enough that he’d gone and abandoned Mavis back home, alone, with nobody to help her over the rough patches. He didn’t need another person to betray, and they sure as hell didn’t need him.

Both of them slept, eventually. Somewhat.

Morning eventually broke… like a carton of eggs beneath a Sherman tank… and the next shift of guards arrived. Today it was Jager, which was comparatively good news; he didn’t hit too hard, he didn’t kick once you were down, and he didn’t get a sadistic pleasure out of ‘accidentally’ spilling your dinner on the ground. Licking watery potato soup off a filthy floor wasn’t nearly as pleasant a way of dining as it sounded. Especially after the first two or three times it had happened; after that, one could say that the thrill had definitely worn off.

They could both hear his boots clicking on the floor as he slid open the observation windows, one by one, until he came to Newkirk’s.

“ **Raus, Newkirk, raus! Achtun—Gott im Himmel! The Englander has** —”

“Next cell over, Jager,” Newkirk called. “It’s all right. No escapes. I’m in here.”

“Englander? Why are you here?”

“Ah, well, that’s really the universal question, now, isn’t it?” Newkirk grinned lazily at the ceiling.

“You should not be here!”

“Couldn’t agree more. Point me towards London and I’ll be out of your way before you can say auf Wiedersehen.”

Jager opened the door, huffing in righteous fury. He glared at Newkirk. “How did you come to be here?”

“Well, you see, when a mummy and a daddy love each other very much—”

“ **What is going on here? Jager, what’s the problem?** ”

“ **No problem.** **That halfwit Richter put the prisoners together, that’s all. He must have let Newkirk out, God only knows why. He’s in the wrong cell.** ”

“ **Is that so?** ” Bauer was the other guard on shift, it seemed. That wasn’t good news at all. He switched to English. “LeBeau. Food!” He handed him a mess tin half full of something that probably wasn’t poisonous and a chunk of sawdusty bread. His expression not indicative of unmixed delight, LeBeau took it.

Bauer nodded. “Jager! Put the Englander’s food in _his_ cell.”

Jager nodded, and gestured sharply at Newkirk, who started forward, but Bauer stopped him. “ **Nein**. Continue your visit.” Pushing a startled Jager out of the doorway, Bauer slammed the cell door shut on the two of them. And the single plate of alleged food.

Newkirk and LeBeau looked at each other, not quite sure what to do next. LeBeau scowled. “ _Those pigs._ Come. We will share this.”

“No, that’s yours,” Newkirk said automatically. “Saya voo. Anyhow, judging from the smell, I’m better off skipping breakfast.”

“Do not be foolish. _Do you think_ I would sit here and eat while you go hungry? _What sort of_ _host_ would do so?” He smiled tentatively; this was not about a mouthful or two of stew. “Eat with me, _mon ami._ ”

Newkirk hated the idea of taking food out of the other man’s mouth. He hated the idea of taking charity, and—most importantly—he told himself that he hated the idea of making friends. But he’d never been much for listening, it seemed. Despite himself, he smiled a bit; this time it reached his eyes. “Mercy, Louie. But just, um… un petty poe.”

“Your accent is getting worse, not better,” LeBeau commented, tearing the bread in half and handing a portion to Newkirk.

“Story of my life, mate. My accent’s no great shakes in English, either,” Newkirk said lightly, tearing ‘his’ piece in half and putting one part back on the plate.

LeBeau sighed inwardly. Stubborn English mule. They ate in silence for a moment or two, then he tried again. “I am sorry about last night. Are you hurt?”

“Me? Cor, mate, I got worse than that every time dear old dad staggered in from the pub. I’m fine. I’m just sorry I’m doing you out of your breakfast… and I promise, I won’t try to get in your way after we’ve finished our thirty days, all right? You’re right; you don’t need a nanny, and I didn’t mean to insult you.”

“I am not insulted. I… I thank you for the kindness. But you should not do such things for me. Do not do so again. Not for me.”

Newkirk looked away. So LeBeau really _didn’t_ want a friend. Well, that was as it should be, he told himself. “Right, LeBeau. I’m sorry.”

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

Ersatz French translations:

None, none. _Je_ swee dessulay—Non, non. _Je_ suis desolee—No, no _. I’m_ sorry.

Bone swore—Bon soir—Good night

Saya voo—C’est a vous—it’s yours

Mercy. Un petty poe—Merci. Un petit peu—Thanks. A little bit.

The word ‘chuffed’ means ‘pleased.’ A ‘china’ is a friend. (From the words ‘china plate’, which rhymes with ‘mate.’) Yes, he’s being obscure, and yes, it’s somewhat deliberate.

The phrase ‘Katie bar the door’ means something in between ‘watch out’ and ‘run for your life.’ It seems to be mostly American slang, but at least one etymological explanation for the phrase stems from an incident in British history, so I put it in his vocabulary... partially because I love the phrase, and partially because it makes no literal sense whatsoever in any language, and would thoroughly confuse someone like LeBeau who is not yet exactly fluent.


	3. Chapter 3

They were back in their respective cells, and therefore back to shouting through the walls, (as unobtrusively as possible, of course,) by the next afternoon. There had been an abortive attempt at tapping out their messages in Morse code, using the heel of a boot on the metal cell doors, but it turned out that Newkirk’s French was not improved by his creative spelling thereof, LeBeau’s Morse was fairly hazy to begin with, and the echoes had given the guards headaches, which they had obligingly shared with all and sundry. Not worth the candle, as Newkirk had put it. And then he had had to explain to LeBeau what candles had to do with anything.

They kept up their language lessons as best they could, but somehow the zest had gone out of it, and the arguing dwindled away. The cordiality it left behind was flat, and somehow unsatisfying.

Time, nonetheless, passed.

They were released on a sulky day that couldn’t make up its mind whether it wanted to rain or sleet, and compromised by doing both. LeBeau shivered, and wrapped his scarf a bit tighter around his throat. “This weather is terrible,” he said. “And so cold!”

“ _Yes. It usually is. Germany is a very beautiful country, is it not so?_ ” Newkirk said, with a sarcastic eye roll and careful attention to his pronunciation.

LeBeau beamed. “Better! Much better! That almost sounded like French!”

“Thanks a lot,” Newkirk replied. “Come on. If you don’t like my version of the language, there are some blokes you ought to meet.” He indicated direction with a jerk of his head, and they set off across the compound.

LeBeau glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. In daylight, the other man seemed even more wraithlike than he’d seemed in the dim electric lights of the cooler. Except, of course, for the hectic flush across his cheekbones that didn’t herald anything good, especially when taken in conjunction with the cough he insisted was nothing more than the predictable result of thirty straight days of continually abusing his vocal cords. _He is getting sick_ , he thought, and told himself that he wasn’t worried.

“All right then, here we are,” Newkirk announced, stopping at a small knot of men wearing Free French insignia on their sleeves. “Gents, this is my mate LeBeau. One of your lot. He’s been teaching me French to pass the time.”

One of the men smiled, offered a hand. “ _I’m Corporal Guillaume Dubois._ _Welcome to Hell.”_

“ _Corporal Louis LeBeau. At least we are in good company._ ”

“You call this good company?” Dubois switched back to English, shot Newkirk a playful look. “You have both been too long in the cooler. But you say you are teaching him a civilized language? Perhaps there is hope.”

“Well, I have tried. Not an easy thing to do!”

“Interesting idea _—_ let us hear?”

Newkirk shrugged. “Fair warning, lads. According to LeBeau, I sound like a drunken cow. But here goes, then— _Bonjour._ _Would you like to screw me?”_

There was a heartbeat of dead silence. Then, and completely understandably, the other men exploded into howls of laughter.

Newkirk blinked. Bad accent or no, it shouldn’t have been that funny… Then, as the penny dropped, with a glance at LeBeau so dry that it should have desiccated him on the spot, he said, “Somebody who shall remain nameless told me that meant ‘Pleasure to meet you,’ and I may be going out on a limb here, but I’m going to assume that it doesn’t. Tell me this. If I’d actually used that line on a bird, would I just have gotten my face slapped, or would her brothers have been waiting for me in the alley behind the pub with their knives drawn?”

“Both, probably,” Dubois said, wiping the tears from his eyes as he got himself back under control. “But take heart. If the girl does not slap you, you are in for a very good night.”

Another flier—a sergeant, from the stripes—chimed in. “And if her brothers do not kill you, you could be in for an even better night!”

His eyes widened. “That tears it; don’t tell me what I said! I don’t want to know! Cor, LeBeau—did anything you taught me mean what you said it did?”

“ _I’m sorry,_ Newkirk; I couldn’t resist _._ But everything else is as I said,” LeBeau promised. Then, with a sly grin, added, “Mostly.”

“I’ll get you for that,” Newkirk said, shaking his head. “Just you wait. In fact—” his throat caught, and he went into a spate of coughing that bent him nearly double. “ _Beg pardon_ , and I hope to God that actually means what you said it does,” he said, when he could speak again. “Thanks ever so for the language lessons, mate. See you around.” With a friendly nod, he turned to go, stuffing his hands into his pockets and heading back across the snowy ground. LeBeau blinked; he hadn’t quite expected to be simply abandoned to strangers.

The Frenchmen watched him go. “ _Well, I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time. It’s good to meet you, Corporal,”_ said the sergeant.

“ _It is a pleasure to meet you all,_ ” LeBeau answered, and smiled. The Englishman had been a good sparring partner, and he could admit, if only in the privacy of his own head, that having somebody to talk to for those first dark days had been a lifeline and a godsend, but hearing his own language was like a breath of home.

Dubois draped an arm over his shoulder. “ _There are not that many of us here as compared to the English, so we try to stick together. What barracks are you in?”_

 _“Two, I think the Boche colonel said_ ,” said LeBeau, trying to dredge up a month-old memory.

“ _Damn. No other Frenchmen are assigned there. Ah, well, perhaps we can get you transferred in a month or so_.”

LeBeau grimaced. “ _In a month or so I hope to have escaped.”_

 _“Maybe,”_ said Dubois noncommittally. “ _LeBeau, you don’t know me, and this is none of my business, but may I offer you a word of advice?”_

 _“Of course,_ ” LeBeau said, expecting to be told horror stories about failed escapes. He would listen politely, and take it all under consideration, and then escape as soon as was humanly possible. Dubois did not have to accompany him if he didn’t want to.

“ _Stay away from him as much as you can. Newkirk. He’s trouble._ ”

“ _What?_ ” LeBeau blinked. That was taking the conversation in directions he hadn’t even considered. “ _It was only a joke; surely you don’t think he’d_ —”

“ _No, no._ _Not that. Just… he’s trouble. He annoys the guards, he steals, he fights. He’s in the cooler so often I don’t know why they even bother assigning him to a barracks. The RAF gave him two stripes, but he’s gotten a hell of a lot more of them from the Nazis, and he still never seems to learn. You’re new, the last thing you need is the Boche associating you with him.”_

 _“I see,”_ LeBeau said slowly. “ _Thank you for the warning. Is there… is there anyone else you would suggest I avoid?”_

 _“Not really. Most here are good men. A few bullies, but I’ll point them out as we see them,”_ Dubois said. “ _You’ll be fine. Come. I’ll show you around the rest of the camp.”_

They finished their tour, late that afternoon, at Barracks Two. The cooler had been a miserable, dank pit. The barracks, somehow, managed to be almost worse. There were gaps in the door large enough to let in the sunlight, (assuming the sun ever shone in Germany, which LeBeau was not about to take on faith,) the wind whistled through the holes in the roof, and the ramshackle bunks looked ready to collapse. The building was icy cold, the iron stove was unlit, and it smelled of sweaty, overcrowded misery.

“LeBeau?” Newkirk looked up as they entered. “Long time, no see, mate. Didn’t know you were setting up housekeeping in this particular toilet.”

“It would seem so,” LeBeau said, looking around, trying to mask his distaste.

He grinned. “Oh, don’t look so sour. You haven’t seen all its good points yet.”

“What good points?”

“When I find some, I’ll be sure to tell you.” Newkirk got up, stretched lazily. “Hmm. Say, Forrest. A word in your shell-like ear?” With no further ado, he crossed the room, slung an arm over the shoulder of another RAF airman, and began a low-voiced conversation.

LeBeau frowned. He did not especially appreciate being ignored, and this was now the second time Newkirk had abandoned him mid-conversation. _Dubois was right. He is a good man to stay away from. Rude, stubborn fool._ Left to himself, he wandered around the barracks, examining it a bit more closely. The men looked like statues or ghosts, slouched on every article of furniture in the room, most of them draped in their blankets, all busily engaged in doing nothing.

Forrest came back, Newkirk at his heels. “LeBeau, was it? You’ll be bunking in with me, old chap. Hope you don’t kick like my last one did.”

“You want me to share your bed?”

“Your virtue is perfectly safe,” Forrest said, rolling his eyes. “Including you, we’ve got thirty-five sardines in this little tin, and eight bunk beds. Sixteen mattresses, two men apiece, and three on the floor waiting for a spot to open up. We do the best we can, Corporal.”

“Of course. I did not mean…”

Forrest looked away for a moment, then returned his attention to LeBeau. “Quite all right. We’re over here. Bottom bunk; it’s a bit warmer.”

“Right, the icicles hanging off your nose will be at least an inch shorter than they would be up top,” Newkirk said helpfully.

“Thank you very much, Corporal,” Forrest said dryly. “Don’t know what we’d do without you.”

“Apparently the Krauts don’t either. Come on, lads, it’s nearly chow time. LeBeau, you’re in for a rare treat.”

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

“A rare treat?” LeBeau asked, as something appalling was ladled into his tin plate. “This you call a rare treat?”

“Must be rare. It sure as hell isn’t well done.” Newkirk, directly behind him in line, and trying not to smell his own entrée, accepted his piece of bread and grimaced. “Cor, there’s enough mold on this thing to put Alexander Fleming out of business.”

“ _Revolting_ ,” LeBeau grumbled. “ _At home_ , we would not even give _this muck_ to the dogs. I thought once I was out of the cooler the food would be _less inedible_.”

“The Jerries wouldn’t serve this to their dogs, either,” Forrest said bitterly. “They get far better food than this.”

“Of course they do. The dogs are valuable,” muttered another prisoner.

Spotting a few empty spaces at one of the long tables, they walked over. Forrest sat down at the table and, his lips tight with distaste, took his first bite. Newkirk sat beside him and, motioning LeBeau to sit on his other side, poked a tentative spoon into the gelatinous… stuff.

Forrest, with a pointed look at Newkirk, broke off a bit of bread, scraped away the mold, and dipped it into the stew. Newkirk nodded, picked up his own untouched piece and handed it over, then went back to picking at his meal. LeBeau, who had not missed the byplay, looked at him questioningly.

“Debt of honor,” Newkirk said, shrugging it off. “Payment for services rendered. You know how it is.”

“And getting off cheaply, at that,” Forrest smiled.

“Don’t blame me if you don’t strike the world’s hardest bargain.” His expression clouded over for a moment, and he swallowed, looking green. “Do forgive my manners. I… oh, hell, Forrest, an advance on next time, all right? I’ve got to—” Hurriedly, he shoved the still mostly full bowl over to the other man, scrambled to his feet, and all but ran for the door.

LeBeau stared after him. “He is ill, I think.”

Forrest sighed. “He’ll be all right. Probably flu again. It’ll be your turn soon enough, never fear.” He poured half of Newkirk’s abandoned meal into LeBeau’s dish, emptied the rest into his own. Off LeBeau’s expression, he lifted an eyebrow. “No sense in wasting it.”

LeBeau ate, thinking hard. “What was he paying you for?”

Forrest kept his eyes on his plate and his voice nonchalant. “His business, not mine to tell. Let’s say I did him a small favor and leave it at that.”

That sounded suspicious, but LeBeau didn’t press, and it was obvious that Forrest didn’t want to pursue the topic. They finished eating in silence.

Roll call that evening ran long, primarily because the Kommandant, who was snugly buttoned into a warm winter coat and well shielded by a black umbrella, took the opportunity to deliver what was apparently a well-polished and familiar speech on the subject of the inevitable triumph of the Thousand Year Reich. He waxed eloquent on the mental picture of the subjugation of first Europe, then the world, and the unquestionable superiority of Germans, ad infinitum, ad nauseum, and LeBeau stopped listening about five minutes in. It was still snowing, he was so cold that he could no longer feel his toes, and he was still hungry, despite the additional half-ration. The glassy-eyed stares on the faces of the other prisoners suggested that he was not alone in his disinterest. Newkirk, standing some four or five places to his right, looked too numb even to notice that the man was still talking, and indeed, needed to be nudged back into awareness of his surroundings when they were finally dismissed.

And they were dismissed, eventually, and staggered into the barracks. Nobody bothered undressing, and only a few even removed their boots before crawling into bed and huddling into the blankets. LeBeau took off his beret, then, tentative, lay down on the edge of the bunk Forrest had pointed out to him.

“That’s the one nice thing about the cooler, innit? A bed all to yourself and no snoring neighbors.” Newkirk gave him a weary smile as he slid his cap under the shoulder strap of his sodden jacket for safekeeping, and curled up on the floor in a puppy pile with the other bunkless unfortunates. “Good night, mate.”

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

Author’s note: Alexander Fleming was the man who discovered penicillin after a Petrie dish became moldy. It was not available for civilian use until after WWII. I could not say with any certainty whether the mold on the mess hall bread might have had medicinal qualities, or if it would have had any effect on the nasty stomach bug our poor friend is incubating.

And as for LeBeau’s creative translation, don’t think too badly of him. That really _was_ the only


	4. Chapter 4

The morning wasn’t much of an improvement on the night before. Roll call featured another unbearably longwinded philippic from the Kommandant, who was obviously in love with the sound of his own voice. Not a fascination shared by anyone else, but at least someone was enjoying the experience. Breakfast was brownish water masquerading as coffee and more coarse bread; this time it was both moldy _and_ stale, apparently by way of variety.

And that was the pattern of life for the next couple of weeks. LeBeau, not quite sure where he fit—where he _wanted_ to fit— _if_ he wanted to fit—caromed back and forth between the men in Barracks Two and the other French prisoners. He had, once or twice, discussed the possibility of transfer with Dubois, but in the end, had not put in the necessary request.

“ _We’d be more than happy to have you in with us in Seven,_ ” Dubois had offered. “ _Of course, I’m afraid you’d be part of the floorboard brigade until someone transferred out, unless you have something you could trade for a spot in a bunk, but at least you’d be among your own.”_

“ _I have the clothes on my back,”_ he’d said with a shrug. “ _And I’ll say it before you can; those are probably too small for anyone else, so no—I’ve nothing to trade. Anyhow, I have a bed in Two.”_

“ _You do?”_ Dubois looked surprised. “ _So soon?”_

“ _Since the first night I got out of the cooler. My bunkmate may be English, but at least he doesn’t steal the covers.”_

“ _Stay where you are, then, by all means,”_ Dubois said. “ _You’re lucky.”_

LeBeau bit his lip. He had a feeling that luck had not had much to do with it, and he did not like it at all.

The next day was cold. Not snowing, which was something, but cold enough to be depressing nonetheless. The senior POW officer, a RAF captain of mediocre intelligence and no spine whatsoever, had ‘volunteered’ half the camp for work parties, and the greenish dishwater they were served for dinner on their return was not much of a reward for their labor. Cabbage soup, allegedly. In strict justice, LeBeau had to admit that it might, at one point in its existence, have had a nodding acquaintance with a cabbage leaf, but, if so, they had long since parted ways, and on no amicable terms, either.

Twelve hours of grubbing in the dirt could do wonders for the appetite, though. Even Newkirk, who was still roughly the same color as the soup, had devoured his portion with an alacrity that really should have been reserved for something worthier. Over his shoulder, LeBeau looked longingly at the mess hall as they left. “A sin, what they do to food. I tell you, if I could get some of the… the tools, the makings? A pot, a knife… some supplies. I could make such better meals!”

“I do have a straight razor,” Forrest commented. “And when you come right down to it, a pot is nothing more than a metal bucket, so perhaps one of the fire pails would do? We’ve already got the stove in the barracks… there’s enough wood to light it for a little while.”

“That’s all very well so far as it goes, but we _are_ still missing a few necessities,” said Richmond, another RAF sergeant. “Anything remotely resembling _food_ , for a start.”

Newkirk cocked his head thoughtfully. “You know, Louie, the guards’ mess is bound to have some decent stuff stashed away. Perhaps if you were to make up a bit of a shopping list, I could take a stroll down to market.”

“ _Impossible!”_ LeBeau scoffed. “Is it so easy? Is it not… shut tight?”

“I’ve a bit of a talent for getting into places I oughtn’t to be,” Newkirk said airily. “Never you fear on that score. Tell me what you want; I’ll see if I can’t find it for you. Who would you rather see having a decent meal for a change—the bloody Krauts or us?”

LeBeau shook his head. “Stealing from the _Boche_? This is very dangerous.”

“What can they do to me? Put me in prison?” Newkirk grinned at him. “Look, it’s my own neck I’m risking, and it’s a risk I’m willing to take if it means a good dinner for the lot of us.”

LeBeau frowned. He had no high opinion of Newkirk’s common sense, and, if he was going to be entirely honest with himself, he wanted what the other man was offering too desperately to be at all certain that he should accept it. He knew how badly his hands itched to create, how badly he wanted to cook, to bring something beautiful into existence; even here in Hell, perhaps _especially_ here in Hell, he wanted there to be something that was not ugly and shameful.

He was, at his core, a chef. He wanted to cook food that made life feel like something other than a penance for some unknown sin, and he wanted to give that food to the beaten-down men with whom he found himself, (and he steadfastly refused to name any names, because so long as it was a simple generalized altruism rather than any real interpersonal connection he could not be hurt by it,) and, admittedly, he wanted the chance to eat something that did not make him wish that he had not survived being shot down. He was not going to apologize for being human.

Yes, he wanted whatever treasures might be purloined from their captors. He wanted the Englishman to obtain them for him, and to hell with the possible consequences. He wanted it too much to be at all reasonable about calculating the odds of discovery and punishment. That lack of objectivity, he knew, was reason enough in and of itself to think twice and thrice before agreeing. “Perhaps,” he said, guardedly. “This is very dangerous. And the more so because whatever I make, whatever you bring, we cannot hope to feed all. And those we do not feed would be angry.”

“He’s got a point,” Forrest admitted. “Even if we stick to just our boys in Barracks Two, it’s going to be quite a crowd around the old dinner table.”

“We can try something or we can do nothing,” Newkirk said bluntly. “If we try, yes, we’re taking a big risk, and, yes, we’ll probably get caught sooner or later. We do nothing, men will die, and it’ll be sooner rather than later. Callahan looks like a toast rack in trousers.”

 _So do you_ , LeBeau thought, once he’d deciphered that little mental image. And perhaps that was what decided him. “Vegetables. _Pommes de terre_ , surely they will have these, _un chou_ , _carottes, oignons;_ always these are good. Meat would be good, but not likely. Better possibility there will be bones for stock. Flour to give some… thickness, some shape. Salt. Garlic. Other herbs these _couchons_ will not have, I think, but any they do.”

“Flour, salt, bones, garlic, herbs if they’ve got them. Meat if we’re lucky. Veg. What was that about earth?”

“ _Pommes de terre._ Potatoes,” Forrest translated. “Spent a few holidays in France when I was at uni; can’t speak it to save my life, but I can read a menu with the best of them. Potatoes, cabbage, onions, carrots, and I suppose anything else that isn’t nailed down.”

“Done. I’ll have the footman carry your shopping up to the scullery,” Newkirk promised.

“Newkirk…” LeBeau hesitated as they reached the door to their barracks, and the other men went in. He didn’t know what, exactly, he wanted to say, and even if he had known, he didn’t have the necessary English words. “This is not safe,” he said finally.

He just shrugged. “I won’t mention your name if I’m nicked.”

“That is not what I am saying!” Now he was insulted. “I am not thinking of myself!”

“I know you’re not. But you’re not thinking of Callahan, either. And someone’s got to. Think of Forrest, or MacDonald, or any of the lads. Look, mate, I know I’m asking you to take a big risk for blokes you don't really know from Adam, but I _am_ asking you to do it. Cooking in the barracks is a good way to get tossed in the cooler, but what else can we do?”

“And being caught stealing is a good way to be shot.”

“Then I suppose I’d best not be caught, wouldn’t you say?” He flashed a quick smile—a real smile, not one of the cocky grins he wore like a mask. LeBeau was a bit disconcerted to realize that he could already tell the difference. “Never you fear, Louie. I was pinching food for the table before my adult teeth came in. This’ll be just like old times.”

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

When he came skulking back to the barracks late that night, he was carrying his cap in one hand and holding his jacket closed with the other. “Now then,” he said to Forrest, and handed over the cap, which was full of flour. “I just hope I can get all that ruddy flour out of there, or I’m going to look like my own granddad tomorrow.”

“This place will turn us all gray before our time,” Forrest said briskly. “You’ll look quite distinguished, I’m sure.”

“Never mind the compliments,” he said. “LeBeau! Come take a look.” He had discarded his usual sweater in favor of a collared shirt borrowed from another prisoner; it was about three sizes too large for him, and, when tucked snugly into his belt, had made a convenient carrier bag. Undoing the first few buttons, he began extracting groceries.

“Newkirk, you look like Father Christmas,” observed one of the other prisoners. LeBeau hadn’t caught his name yet.

“Well, I feel like Josephine bloody Baker,” he shot back, extracting a large and fragrant onion from the depths of his shirt.

Richmond, a sergeant, and the shirt’s actual owner, groaned. “Strewth, there’s a mental image I didn’t need. And what the hell is that? Onions? Cheers, Newkirk; I’m going to stink to high heaven.”

“Nothing new there, mate. Right, I think that’s the lot.”

LeBeau shook his head in utter disbelief. Six carrots, nine potatoes, the aforementioned onion, three turnips, a couple of beef bones. A withered head of garlic. Half a loaf of ossified bread. A twist of paper with some salt. A cup or two of flour, possibly slightly adulterated with dandruff. For thirty-five men.

It was _miraculous_.

Newkirk shrugged uncomfortably. “It’s not much, I know. The pantry was locked up tighter than the Tower of London, and before I had a chance to so much as peek inside, in comes that tosser Schmitt looking for a bleeding midnight snack. I ducked under the sink till he’d gone away, then just snatched whatever was lying about loose on the counters and scarpered.”

“ _Dear God, I knew this was a bad idea. It is far too dangerous,_ ” LeBeau said.

“Don’t get yourself into a lather. I’m fine,” he said dismissively. “Oh, half a tick. Almost forgot.” He drew a small knife from his waistband, handed it over. “Tomorrow I’ll try for a pot.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Well, things might be different on the continent, but back in England, we like to eat every day,” Newkirk pointed out. “Besides, that pantry was calling my name; I’m curious to see what might be in there.”

“But they will see these things are gone, and guard more carefully. You will be caught!”

“Newkirk, he’s right,” Forrest said. “It’s too great a risk.”

“Fine. We can worry about tomorrow when it gets here,” Newkirk said, with an obedient amiability that immediately made the hairs on the back of LeBeau’s neck stand up. “For now, what say we eat the evidence? I did my part, LeBeau; how about you do yours?”

LeBeau glared at him. He didn’t believe for one minute that Newkirk was going to simply agree that easily. He didn’t believe that Newkirk would agree at all. He wasn’t entirely certain that Newkirk would agree that water was wet if he’d decided that it wasn’t.

But he had achieved the impossible; the food was there. The men were hungry. And the evidence did need to be disposed of. “We must light the stove,” he directed, his mind racing. The bones should be roasted; a tin plate would have to do for a baking dish. Once they had browned a bit, he thought, he would indeed use the fire bucket for a pot, and would boil the bones to make broth.

The scowl fading from his face as he became engrossed in his task, he turned his attention to the small pile of vegetables and grasped the knife. It felt so familiar in his hand. So right. Slowly, then faster and faster as he forgot his surroundings, forgot his fears and his troubles, as years of practice flowed through his fingers, he prepared the _mirepoix_ as though he were in his own kitchen in Paris, as if he had never left his own kitchen in Paris. As if there was not a war, as if he was not stranded in the middle of a nightmare. As if he was not fully aware that he was making, at most, a futile gesture; that a cup or so of soup apiece would do very little for the three dozen men at starvation’s very doorstep watching him work.

Newkirk smiled to himself as LeBeau worked, the chef seeming entirely at peace with himself for the first time since he’d met the man, but he was too tired to watch for very long. He felt his eyes sliding shut while LeBeau was still cutting the potatoes into neat cubes, and was asleep long before he had turned his attention to the onion.

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

Author’s note: _Mirepoix_ , according to the all-knowing internet, is a mixture of chopped carrots, celery, and onions that is a popular component of bone broths like the one LeBeau is preparing. The Germans did not have celery, but I suppose anyone in the barracks who wants to complain about substitutions is more than welcome to take their business elsewhere. 

Josephine Baker was an entertainer, and a phenomenally successful one. She was African-American, but spent most of her life in France, and in fact worked for the French Resistance during WWII. There’s no way Newkirk could have known about that, at least not at this point in his career, and it is therefore completely irrelevant to this story, but interesting nonetheless. Newkirk’s comment was in reference not to her anti-Nazi activities, but to one of her most famous performances, in which she wore nothing but a skirt made of bananas.

And Richmond was absolutely right—strewth, that’s a mental image none of us needed.


	5. Chapter 5

It was a revelation, of sorts; after weeks or months of prison food, preceded by months or years of army rations, some of the men had almost forgotten that eating could be an enjoyable experience. It was well after four in the morning—nearly time for roll call, God help them all—when thirty-five men, by the feeble glow of a motley assortment of cigarette lighters, sat around the barracks, each sipping from a cup of thin broth with a pleasure that bordered on reverence.

LeBeau looked around, over the rim of his own mug. The barracks was still a scene from a horror story. The stove had burned itself out, and the chill was seeping back into the air. The men still looked like ghosts, and the flickering lights, which cast ominous shadows on the walls and on the hollow-eyed faces, did them no favors. But they were smiling, and the atmosphere was suddenly warmer than it had been while the stove was lit.

Newkirk, who had been dozing with his back against the door, was shaken awake by Forrest. He took the proffered cup, tasted it, then smiled, unfolded himself, and crossed the floor to where LeBeau was sitting on the edge of his bunk. He sat down on a footlocker, so their heads were on the same level. “You did a good job, Louie,” he said quietly. “Couldn’t have asked for better, considering what you had to work with.”

“Bah. I would hardly call it a good job,” LeBeau said dismissively, not about to show how good the compliment felt. “Even _under these dreadful circumstances_ , it was not my best work.”

“It’s certainly good enough for me,” Newkirk said. “I’d go so far as to say that, when the history of ersatz scrap bucket soup comes to be written, you’ll have a chapter all your own.”

LeBeau rolled his eyes. So much for compliments. “Very funny. What would an Englishman know about good food, anyhow?”

“I’d say he knows it when he sees it. And when it’s been months since he saw it, I’d say he ought to be grateful to the bloke as made it.” He looked at his empty mug as though seriously considering licking it clean. “I’m not joking, LeBeau. It’s not everyone could stretch half a dozen carrots as far as that and still have it end up tasting like something.”

“It… it is not going to be enough,” LeBeau admitted in a half-whisper. “They… _we_ need more than this.”

“I know. Believe you me, mate, I know.” Newkirk looked grim. “We can’t stop now. It’s dangerous, but are you willing to give this another go?”

LeBeau studied the other man for a moment, then shook his head. “I hope, _mon ami_ , that you are not thinking that you are fooling me,” he said seriously.

“Fooling you? About what? This isn’t a ruddy game, mate. The lads are starving!”

“Not that. You think you are going to go back and steal more, and bring it to me to cook, and tell me that I, _I,_ am the one performing the dangerous task. That it is I doing the favor, not receiving it. _No more lies between us, do you understand?_ I am not fooled by you.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about. Would I try to pull the wool over a mate’s eyes?”

“Pull the wool over…? _Ah, your language makes no sense. What is that even supposed to mean? No, never mind; I don’t care._ Yes, I think you would. To prevent this wool, however, I shall come with you the next time. I will help you choose what we will take.”

“Are you off your bleeding trolley? This isn’t a matter of haggling with the greengrocer over a bunch of parsnips; this is sneaking past a bunch of trigger-happy Krauts with a bushel of potatoes stuffed up your jumper! We could both get shot!”

“Then I suppose we had best not get caught, _wouldn’t you say_?”

With his own words thrown back at him, Newkirk couldn’t do much but glare at him. “Never mind that! We’ve got to keep at this, but you do your half, and I’ll do mine. Exactly what do you know about sneaking about, anyhow? They teach cat burglary at the Cordon Bleu?”

LeBeau smiled, smug. “Pierre, I am French! There are any number of husbands who would be surprised to know how good at sneaking I am. You are right. We cannot stop now… but we will take the risks together or not at all. We are like _the Musketeers, yes? All for one and one for all_.”

“I saw that movie. And I can tell you right now, I am not wearing one of those stupid hats with the feathers in; I don’t care what you say.”

“I would not ask it of you, d’Artagnan.”

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

Two nights later, against the better judgment of pretty much everyone, a pair of silhouettes slipped through the shadows to the guards’ mess. Newkirk, his tongue between his teeth, fussed with the locked door for a moment, then mockingly gestured LeBeau in with the grandeur of a Savoy doorman. Assuming sarcasm was permitted to Savoy employees. Which LeBeau somehow doubted it was, but with an eloquent eyeroll and a very Parisian flip of a hand, he went in anyhow.

Newkirk silently closed the door behind them, and went straight to the pantry. Making even shorter work of that lock, he looked questioningly at LeBeau.

LeBeau crossed the floor, looked inside. It was like looking into a pirate cave, or the fairy gold at the end of a rainbow. The treasures of Solomon could not hope to compare. For a moment, he could scarcely believe that he was truly seeing what he thought he was; then, coming back to reality, he could scarcely believe that he, Louis LeBeau, chef and connoisseur, was staring at cans of Spam and boxes of powdered milk as though they were anything other than crimes against cuisine. But then, this was not reality, was it? This was a stalag, a plywood and barbed wire nightmare come to life, and these dreadful tin cans could mean the difference between life and death.

Working quickly, he selected items, handed them out to Newkirk. He took nothing that was not present in abundance—with any luck the Germans would not notice the loss, at least not for a while—and nothing that would not keep. The barracks was cold enough that an icebox was not, in all likelihood, going to be needed, but better safe than sorry.

They got away clean, and made it back with their booty, including a somewhat battered stewpot that Newkirk had liberated from the very back of a cupboard, where it had obviously been languishing, unused and unwanted, for some time. And, as before, LeBeau set immediately to work, producing a thick stew with—wonder of wonders—meat. Real meat. A thing many of them had not seen for months. Men sat together, mopping up the last vestiges of gravy with bread that was, if not exactly fresh, at least not a case study in petrification or fungi, and there was hope. Another thing that, for most of them, had been little more than a memory for longer than anyone cared to admit.

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

Dubois came to see him, some two weeks later. _“LeBeau… I need to speak with you. Privately.”_

 _“Of course,_ ” he replied. “ _What can I do for you?”_

“ _It’s what I can do for you_ ,” Dubois said. “ _A few of us have been digging a tunnel. I think we’ll be ready to get out of here in a couple of days. If you’ve got the nerve… you could come with us.”_

LeBeau’s eyes lit up. “ _If I have the nerve…! Let me at it! I’ll finish digging that tunnel with my fingernails if I have to!”_

 _“Take it easy,_ ” Dubois laughed. “ _We’re almost ready. Probably by the end of the week; we’ll be reporting to de Gaulle before you know it. The tunnel entrance is in Seven, so you’ll have to sneak over after lights out. All right?”_

Sneaking over… the smile left LeBeau’s face. “ _I… well, may I ask you a favor?”_

“ _What is it?”_

_“Can we include one more man in the escape?”_

_“Who did you have in mind? Counting you, we’re already up to eight. There’s a limit to how many people we can hope to smuggle out of the country at a time.”_

_“I thought of Corporal Newkirk,_ ” LeBeau said, a bit sheepishly. This wasn’t going to end well. The warning Dubois had given him was echoing in his ears, but he had to ask.

“ _ **Him**_ _? LeBeau, are you mad?”_

“ _He is a good man,”_ LeBeau said. “ _A good comrade. He could be a help.”_

Dubois shook his head. “ _We can’t risk it. The Boche watch him like a hawk—he’s made too many attempts already, made himself too much of a scapegoat. Sorry, Corporal.”_

LeBeau nodded slowly. He could tell himself that, simply by virtue of asking the favor, he had made as much of an effort as could reasonably be expected, and escape with the other French prisoners. He could. He’d be lying, and he knew it, but he could.

He bit his lip. Newkirk, he felt sure, would be the first to tell him to go. Would mock him for even entertaining the notion of staying behind, with some bizarre English phrase whose meaning didn’t have much to do with the actual definition of any of the words he used. Just as, if their positions were reversed, he would tell the other man to go, to leave LeBeau behind to shift for himself. He would.

Damn it, why did that sound so unconvincing, even in the privacy of his own head?

“ _Let me think about it for a day or so, please?”_

“ _Of course, LeBeau_ ,” Dubois said, a bit coldly. “ _There’s time. We are still working on the tunnel. I’ll let you know when we are planning to leave.”_

_“Thank you, my friend. I am grateful.”_

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

LeBeau told himself that he was going. That he deserved his freedom as much as anyone else in camp. He and Newkirk had planned another raid on the kitchen that night; he would go through with it, cook one last meal for the men in the barracks, and that would be his parting gift to them. He could report to de Gaulle with a clean conscience. Well, a slightly checkered conscience.

All right, all right; with a load of guilt and a stain on his soul he’d probably carry to the grave.

He couldn’t do it.

Newkirk, who noticed LeBeau’s grim mood but chalked it up to the normal wear and tear of prison life, didn’t comment on it. They ghosted themselves across the compound and into the mess hall, expertly, easily, without a word being spoken. And it was purest chance that Corporal Otto saw a shadow in the window where none should have been and came into the mess hall to investigate.

LeBeau, by prearrangement, broke left as they sprinted out the door. He skirted the Kommandantur, ducked around the water tower, and darted into Barracks Two via the window. He dove into the bunk with Forrest, hat, coat, boots and all, and lay still, feigning sleep and trying not to shake. Forrest, immediately comprehending the situation, flung the blanket over both of them and drew LeBeau close, hiding him as best he could behind his own body.

Newkirk broke right, as planned, pounding past the recreation hall and—ominously—the cooler as he made for the barracks, with Otto, if not hot on his heels, at least lukewarm. But he was an old hand at evading unpleasant personages, the sort who liked to ask rude questions about irrelevant matters like where one had been that evening, whether one had had permission to be there, why one just so happened to be carrying something that looked remarkably like a set of lockpicks, and the exact provenance of any small items one had acquired along the way. And he probably would have made it back safe if Richter had not been slipping back into camp after spending an unauthorized evening at the local biergarten, and was, therefore, eager to impress the Kommandant with his alertness and devotion to duty. After all this time, Newkirk was fairly philosophical about being hauled off for yet another stretch in solitary, but he did think that the fact that the guard positively reeked of beer added unnecessary insult to inevitable injury.

It didn’t even smell like _good_ beer. He hoped Richter’s hangover was one for the books. Serve the wanker right.

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

LeBeau was not philosophical about it at all. He was furious. _I knew it was too dangerous. I knew it. I told him so. Stubborn fool; this was suicide, and we both knew it!_

_I knew it was too dangerous… and I urged him on anyway. I insisted on coming along; perhaps I slowed him down. My fault, all my fault…_

Being furious was easier than being afraid—what was going to happen to Newkirk? _Did_ the Germans shoot thieves?—and was almost visceral enough to drown the feelings of guilt. And apprehension. He could not pick locks; alone, there was no way for him to continue feeding the men. What would he do without that task; what was left to give some meaning to his captivity? How was he to keep himself sane?

Drowning in a sea of emotions, he considered it almost anticlimactic when the German guards discovered the nearly complete tunnel, and the seven men working therein, in Barracks Seven the next day.


	6. Chapter 6

LeBeau watched through the window, stone-faced, as Dubois and the other six men were loaded into a truck bound for Stalag 8. All prisoners were confined to quarters for the next two days as punishment for the attempted escape. The tunnel had already been filled in. All, all was lost. “ _Au revoir, mes amis,”_ he whispered. “ _Vive la France.”_

Two major disruptions of camp life, and LeBeau was uncomfortably aware that he was at the center of both of them. The Kommandant was fit to be tied. This, after all, reflected on him, on his management of the camp, and his superiors in Berlin were hardly the forgiving sort. He could expect no mercy, and therefore would be offering none; guilt or innocence no longer mattered. Not that it ever really had, but even the illusion of fair play had gone by the wayside. All he wanted, now—all he _needed_ — was to punish someone. Anyone. And it would be severe.

Intellectually, LeBeau knew that he should be afraid, should be at least nervous. He felt nothing; he was too numb even to be on tenterhooks. Yet again, he had slipped neatly through the cracks of disaster, alone and unscathed; yet again he had no real idea how, or why. And yet again, those closest to him were vanquished and vanished, leaving him with only his regrets for company. He was anything but grateful.

By now, he was fairly sure that he’d escaped scot-free. It certainly seemed as though he had, anyway. If any of the tunnelers had revealed that he, LeBeau, had been invited to join the escape, he reasoned, he would be on the truck to Stalag 8 with them. Which he wasn’t. And as for the other matter, if Newkirk had admitted that he, LeBeau, had been party to the mess hall burglary, he would be… wherever Newkirk was. Which he also wasn’t. _I won’t mention your name if I’m nicked_ , the thief had said _._ Obviously, he hadn’t.

LeBeau spent the next eight days telling himself that he had no actual proof that Newkirk was dead, and that, in any case, worry was either premature or already too late. He didn’t find himself particularly convincing. On the ninth day, when the Kommandant finally got around to mentioning that Newkirk was in the cooler, where he would remain for the next thirty-six days, and added that he hoped it would serve as a lesson to all of them, LeBeau’s relief was so overwhelming that he didn’t pay much attention to the rest of the tirade, which was probably better for all concerned.

His bunkmates filled him in on the details later. It seemed that the German took a dim view of theft. He considered it an insult to his command, to the Third Reich, to the natural order of things. Especially a theft of food. Food belonging to and reserved for the loyal German soldiers of the camp, intended for Aryan supermen, not the dregs of Europe; the crime was beyond unforgivable. And he resented the implication that the prisoners were not adequately fed, resented it so deeply, that, were it to happen again, bread rations would be reduced by half. Campwide. For the duration.

As an aside, while one of the guilty parties had already been apprehended, he felt sure that the thefts had not been the work of a single man, and any prisoner who cared to relieve his no doubt aching conscience by identifying the other members of the criminal conspiracy would find himself receiving not only the Kommandant’s sincerest gratitude but a double ration of white bread— _with butter—_ for a fortnight.

Forrest’s eyes narrowed a bit. LeBeau stared resolutely into the middle distance, his expression blank, but nobody seemed to feel any immediate need to unburden themselves, and they all returned to the barracks.

“This is bad,” Richmond said, plucking nervously at his shirt. It had been washed, but he imagined that he could still detect the scent of onion.

“Yes, it is,” Forrest agreed with a sigh. “At the risk of getting personal, Corporal, your size makes you easy to identify in a crowd. And our beloved Kommandant is offering quite a toothsome little bribe. I’d be half tempted to turn you in myself if I wasn’t just as guilty.”

LeBeau shrugged, keeping his face blank. “If it happens, then it happens. I can do nothing to prevent it.”

“All we can do is lay low and hope for the best. With any luck, they’ll just think Newkirk was black marketing or something. He’s done it before. They can’t have gotten anything out of him, or we’d already be done for.”

“When it’s just us, he never shuts up,” Richmond said. “But when the chips are down, he knows how to keep his tongue behind his teeth.”

LeBeau took a moment to decipher that. He decided, firstly, that Richmond probably meant that Newkirk would not betray them, which he would have thought so self-evident that it did not require repetition, and, secondly, that he was not going to bother asking about the relevance of downed chips (a word for which he knew several definitions, none of which seemed to fit the situation, not even the one about— shudder— deep fried potato wedges,) nor of tongues and teeth. Thirdly, that English was a mad language. No wonder it produced a mad people.

“We’re going to have to be perfect little angels for a while, all right, men? And hide your kitchen tools, LeBeau. Possession of stolen cookware would be bad enough, but if they knew we had a knife in here... the cooler would be the least of it,” Forrest continued. “Just by virtue of being in the same barracks as Newkirk, we’re all going to be under suspicion anyway.”

Richmond shook his head. “And rightfully so, I suppose. Forty-five days in an isolation cell! That poor bastard. God, I don’t even like to think about it.”

“He was not well _before_ this happened. I hope this will not be too much for him,” LeBeau said.

“He’ll manage,” Forrest said shortly. It sounded unsympathetic, but the set of his jaw and the tension in his shoulders gave the lie to the curtness of his words. “Always does. He can handle anything Jerry throws at him.”

“I should bloody well think so,” said another prisoner; LeBeau didn’t see which. “He’s certainly got the practice. That damned Cockney can get himself locked up in every hole in Germany if he likes, for all of me, but I don’t much appreciate getting caught in the crossfire.”

“Stow it, Hawkins,” Richmond said sharply. “I didn’t see you saying ‘no’ when we were passing around the platters.”

“You didn’t see me asking that tupenny-hapenny crook to get our bread ration cut, either,” Hawkins snarled. “You didn’t see me asking any of you to start up this whole Robin Hood caper.”

“We were only trying to help,” LeBeau began.

“Oh, of course, and a brilliant job you’ve made of it, Frog!”

“That’s enough!” said Forrest. “Leave off, Hawkins. Look, we’re not doing ourselves or anyone else any good by tearing each other apart. We’ll just all be on our best behavior for a while, and from here on in we’ll leave the guard’s mess strictly alone. The Kommandant will come up with something else to be angry about soon enough; he’ll forget all about us.”

“And Newkirk sits in a coffin for six weeks.” LeBeau didn’t even try to hide the bitterness in his voice.

“What do you care? For that matter, what does _he_ care? One cage is as good as another to a jailbird,” said Hawkins.

“What are you saying? _Why are you being such an ass? You ungrateful—_ ”

“Did you think he learned to pick locks in Sunday School?” Hawkins said. “He’s probably been in and out of places like this since he was in short pants. Pity he didn’t stay there.”

“ _I’ve had just about enough of you, and I don’t have to stand here and listen to your filthy schoolyard insults,_ ” LeBeau snapped, his patience threadbare and his English deserting him. How dared he. How _dared_ he? Who needed enemies when this was the best they could scrape up by way of allies?

“Well, now. Aren’t we quick to defend the honor of our resident felon,” Hawkins cooed in a saccharine singsong. “How touching! Must be true what they say about you French. He was certainly quick enough about getting you into a bed; I knew he must have had his reasons for that. Tell me—which one of you is the girl?”

LeBeau needed a minute to parse that, to switch his brain back to English. Once he had, though, his already tenuous grasp on his temper melted like butter in a hot pan, and he started forward, fists at the ready and the world blazing red around the edges of his vision.

He didn’t get far; Richmond, who had not needed to pause for a translation, caught him by both arms, and, simultaneously, Forrest grabbed Hawkins before matters could degenerate any further.

“That’s _more_ than enough out of you,” Forrest rasped. “Hawkins, you’re out of line. LeBeau, cool off! The last thing we need is to have the guard coming in here.”

“The last thing _you_ need, maybe. From where I’m standing, my bunkmates are more of a danger to me than the damned Krauts,” Hawkins snapped. “Let the guard come! Seems to me, the sooner we get the troublemakers out of here, the safer we’ll all be.”

The barracks went very quiet.

“Rats don’t tend to have a very good time of it around here,” said someone, finally. LeBeau didn’t see who, and didn’t recognize the voice.

“Are you _threatening_ me, Everett?”

“Do I have to? Are you genuinely daft enough to sell men’s lives for two weeks of bread?” Everett asked. “Think about it. You’d be trading the good will of every man in camp for a couple of days in Jerry’s good graces, and you wouldn’t be getting that trust back anytime soon. Life’s not fun for a man with no mates. That’s not a threat; that’s simple _logic_ _._ What happens the next time you need a favor? Going to ask your good friend the Kommandant?”

“You’re all mad,” Hawkins grumbled, subsiding. “All of you.”

“Then perhaps you’d best transfer to a saner barracks,” Richmond said.

“…Or a saner camp,” Everett said softly. “Like the lot from Seven. We could probably help you arrange that. If you wanted.”

Outnumbered, Hawkins shook off Forrest’s arm with a curse. “To hell with you,” he said defiantly, and vaulted into his bunk. “To hell with _all_ of you.”

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

Newkirk readjusted his position, on the off chance that a few inches one way or the other would suddenly wring something approaching comfort from the wooden bench in his cell. He considered counting the bricks in the wall again—you never knew; they might have added one or two since the last time he’d checked—but decided to postpone that particular source of amusement for another couple of hours. He wasn’t altogether sure he could handle the excitement.

He hoped they’d empty the slop bucket sometime soon. Three days on, it was getting a bit ripe. He _thought_ it had been three days since the last time they’d cleared it. Always the chance he’d miscalculated, of course. He could chew on both sides of his mouth again, so maybe it was closer to four.

He wondered how LeBeau was doing. He was pretty sure that the Frenchman had gotten away clean; the guards wouldn’t have been nearly as interested in hearing his full and complete recounting of the events of the burglary if they’d had any idea who his accomplice had been. And they had been quite eager for him to tell them all about it, which was actually why the left side of his jaw (among a varied assortment of other places, alas,) had been a bit tender in the first place. An inveterate showman, he never could resist an appreciative audience, which was why, after a few hours of their enthusiastic encouragement to do so, he’d broken down and regaled them with the whole sad story. He only hoped that they had enjoyed their snipe hunt through the camp records looking for Private A. J. Raffles of the RAF even half as much as he’d enjoyed sending them on it. Bastards.

It had been a fool’s errand from the first, and he knew it. Had known it from the start. There had never been a great deal of hope that he— that _they—_ could accomplish anything much more than forestalling the inevitable for a couple of days. At best, a few weeks. He wasn’t entirely sure why fighting for those few extra days of privation and misery had seemed so utterly important. They were all dead men walking, anyhow; he’d known _that_ from the start, too.

But it was important. God only knew why, (and since He’d never bothered telling Newkirk anything else, he wasn’t expecting any answers this time, either,) but for whatever reason, it was important. The men needed help. He barely knew half of them, and, of those he did know, he didn’t even really _like_ half of them. And he wasn’t fool enough to think that the feeling wasn’t mutual; people went cold and numb very quickly in the soul-rotting conditions of the camp, and chances were that most of them wouldn’t bother to piss on him if he were on fire. Nonetheless… it was important.

They’d still had a few odds and ends hidden under the floorboards the night of their ill-fated cupboard raid, and he already knew that Louie had a gift for doing quite a lot with very little. Perhaps the weaker residents of Barracks Two would have a couple more decent meals before… well, before.

He swore under his breath. And, because he desperately needed to head off that train of thought before it hurtled off a cliff and took what was left of his sanity with it, he began counting the bricks yet again.

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

Author’s note: Arthur J. Raffles was the main character of a series of novellas and short stories that were, essentially, Sherlock Holmes rip-offs, with the single difference that Raffles was a thief and safecracker rather than a detective. The original canon was written in the 1900s, (by Arthur Conan Doyle’s brother-in-law, as it happens,) but the series was continued, by a different writer, in the 1930s and early 1940s. They were quite popular; basically, Newkirk has just admitted to pulling off a caper with Don Corleone or Wile E. Coyote. And the Germans fell for it. His sense of humor is going to get him killed one of these days.


	7. Chapter 7

The weather had finally remembered that it was supposed to be edging into spring, and the morning Newkirk was, grudgingly, allowed to return to the barracks was almost pretty. The sun shone brightly in a cloudless sky, and the trees on the other side of the barbed wire flaunted their buds and blossoms like so many dancers. They stood out in painful contrast to the stark ugliness of the guard towers, and it almost seemed like calculated mockery. The winter had been cruel, but that was to be expected. The starkness had at least matched the rest of their surroundings. Somehow the flamboyant new growth as the woods sprang back to life was crueler, a harsh reminder of everything they had lost.

Newkirk winced as the sunlight hit him for the first time in forty-five days, and he shaded his sensitized eyes with his hand, but he smiled when he saw LeBeau waiting for him by the water tower. “Oi, LeBeau! Fancy meeting you here.”

“Welcome back, _mon ami_ ,” LeBeau said, carefully hiding his horror at the other man’s wasted appearance. “It’s good to see you again.”

“You too, mate,” Newkirk said cheerfully. “Keeping well, I hope?”

“Me, I am perfectly fine,” LeBeau said. “How are you?”

“Never better,” Newkirk said, firmly dismissing the topic. “A nice little holiday away from the cares of the workaday world; who could complain? What’s new? Any good gossip going about?”

“Let me see. Barracks Three won this month’s football tournament, but their star player managed to break his left foot, so they will probably lose the title next month.”

“That’s Peterson, right? The one what looks like a bear who’s had a shave?”

“ _Oui_ , that is correct.”

“Poor sod. Did the Krauts let him see a sawbones?”

LeBeau assumed, correctly, that meant ‘doctor.’ “There is a medic in Barracks Four. He was able to set the break. And he said that if Peterson had not been purposely trying to kick his opponents rather than the ball, the accident would not have happened in the first place, so nobody is feeling very sorry for him.”

Newkirk laughed. “Sounds about right. Dirtiest player in camp. I’m pretty sure I still have a dent in my shin shaped like Peterson’s boot, all the way back from the last time I played. Well, until he’s back to his nasty old self again, we might have a chance at winning a game once in a while. Or at least get through a quarter without ending up black and blue.”

“I doubt it. Four new prisoners were brought in from Russia, and two of them make Peterson look like a model of decorum.”

“Charming. Well, I’ll reckon up the odds after I see their form. Might well lose the games, but could end up winning the wagers… and that’s what really counts, right?”

LeBeau rolled his eyes mockingly. “You are a true sportsman.”

“You know it,” Newkirk agreed. “Right then. Four new Russians in the neighborhood, the football scores… what’s the bit you’re trying to avoid mentioning?”

They were almost at the door of Barracks Two; there was no chance of keeping it hidden much longer anyhow. “What do you want me to say? That you smell like a sewer or that you look like a ghost?”

“Now, see, if you were a gorgeous bird, I might actually care about your opinion of my looks,” Newkirk said lightly. “As it is, you can keep your silver-tongued flattery to yourself. How’re your mate Dubois and his lot?”

LeBeau winced. “I do not know. They were caught digging a tunnel. _Our pig of a Kommandant_ transferred them all to another camp.”

Newkirk went very still. “Oh, bloody hell. I’m sorry, Louie. I didn’t know.”

“Of course you did not. How could you?” He sighed. “They were so close. Another couple of days and… well.”

“Yeah,” Newkirk said, to spare LeBeau from having to go into any more detail. He’d been a part of a couple of abortive tunnel projects himself, and, frankly, he didn’t trust them. The one the Krauts had found had, in retrospect, been the _successful_ one. The one that had collapsed on them… now that was something he tried not to think about. “That really is rough, mate. I’m sorry.”

LeBeau just nodded. “It has… it has not been a good time for any of us. Many bad things happened.”

“I see,” Newkirk said dully. “ _Many_ bad things. So there _is_ more to the story, then.”

“I am afraid so,” LeBeau said. He opened the door, and they walked in.

Newkirk looked around. “Well, well… same old rattrap of a barracks, same old leak in the ceiling, same old smell of dirty socks and secondhand cabbage. It certainly is good to be home.” He sat down at the table, steepled his hands, and took a deep breath. “All right, I’m ready, mate. Let me have it. What aren’t you telling me?”

Richmond cleared his throat. “Er… well, Newkirk? You were next up on the queue. And there’s space with me.”

Newkirk blinked, then an unreadable expression washed over his face. “Oh, no. Damn it, no. Who? When?”

“Callahan. A couple of weeks after you went in. We… well, we expected it,” Forrest said quietly.

“ _Damn_ this war,” Newkirk whispered, venom in his voice. “This filthy, filthy, sodding war... No, Richmond, whoever had the spot while I was in can keep it. Chances are I’ll be back in the cooler soon enough, anyway.” With that, he got up, kicked the door violently open, and strode out into the compound.

LeBeau found himself halfway out the door before he knew he was on his feet. The look on his barracksmate— his accomplice—his _friend’s_ face had been genuinely frightening. Half-afraid that Newkirk was going to take the opportunity to avenge Callahan’s death by attacking the nearest German and devil take the consequences, and more than half-afraid that he’d take it into his head to do something worse, LeBeau scanned the yard until he saw the lanky figure just disappearing behind the habitually padlocked recreation hall.

He followed. “Pierre?”

Newkirk stopped, turned around. “Oh… is that you, Louie? Hello again.” His voice was bleak, his expression bleaker.

“I… I wanted to offer my condolences. He was your friend?”

“ _Callahan_? A friend?” he asked, then chuckled. The laugh was the bleakest of all. “Not by a long chalk. I couldn’t stand the tosser. Stupid, stingy, snobbish, short-tempered, selfish, stubborn, and he snored like a bleeding jet engine. And those were his _good_ points. Second biggest waste of skin God ever created.”

LeBeau blinked, a sympathetic speech withering unspoken on his lips. He had been expecting a somewhat tenderer sort of eulogy, and had no ready answer for that. “But… if he was not your friend, why are you upset? Why were you worried when he first became ill?”

“I said I didn’t like him, not that I wished any harm on the bloke,” Newkirk evaded. “Can’t a man show a little solidarity with his fellow-sufferers without all the ruddy questions?”

“That is not all. You are not telling me everything,” LeBeau said. “We said no more lies.”

“…Fine. Fine! You want the whole rotten story? Here’s the meat of it. Callahan and I, we were on the same transport into camp. It was only half-built when we rolled in. There were eighteen of us crammed into the back of a truck that was meant for _maybe_ ten, all of us battered and bloody and scared out of our wits. They had us chained together like dogs, and we were more or less certain that we were all headed straight for a shallow ditch in the woods,” Newkirk said, glaring into the past. “Eighteen. And now I’m the last of the lot. Transferred, dead, or worse, no one’s left who was here when I came.”

“Oh,” LeBeau said softly.

“Yeah. ‘Oh.’ He was it, mate. Now I’m officially the oldest lag in the place.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets, and forced himself to keep his voice casual. “Daresay that means I’m up next. And I think… oh, sod it all, I think it’ll be a _bloody damned relief_. I’ve had enough.”

“No. No! You must not talk so,” LeBeau said, emphasizing the command with a sharp jab to his shoulder. “We will survive this, _mon ami_. You will survive.”

He laughed again, bleaker still. “Yeah, Louie. You’re right. I probably will. That’s what I do, seems like. My old crewmates, the lads back home, other kriegies here in camp, no matter what, famine, flood, or fire, if one man’s going to walk out without a scratch, it’ll be old Peter. God doesn’t want me and the Devil can’t be bothered.”

LeBeau swallowed. “A talent I seem to share,” he admitted. “My own crewmates… I do not think any of them even got out of the plane. I wondered, why me? Am I so much better a man than they, to deserve a miracle? I think not. And again, when we ran from the guard; why were you caught and not I? Is it all simply chance? I come to think it is harder to live, to accept being the lucky one, than it is to die.”

“You call this luck? For that matter, you call this _living_? I’m starting to think that I didn’t make it out of the plane after all. Maybe this _is_ Hell, and the God-botherers are just wrong about it being full of fire. It makes more bloody _sense_.”

Newkirk wasn’t even sure what he was saying anymore, but he couldn’t stop the flow of bitter words; a year of being very brave, of never letting anyone— not kriegie, not Kraut, not _anyone_ —see him as anything other than reckless, cocky, and perhaps a bit mad was catching up with him all at once. He’d watched too many men die. He’d heard too many garbled snippets of what was happening to his country, his city, his _sister,_ without the luxury of knowing anything for certain. He’d spent too much time staring at the bars of a cage and not letting himself admit that he was terrified.

And now, all at once, for reasons he didn’t even understand, the death of a man he probably would have disliked if he’d cared enough about him to put in the requisite effort had brought all of it to the surface, spilling it profligately on the ground at LeBeau’s feet. As if the Frenchman needed to be burdened with his nonsense. As if _anyone_ needed to hear him whinging like a child. Ashamed of his outburst—ashamed of _himself_ —he turned half away, reached into a pocket for his cigarettes, and stuck one in his mouth like a cork. Fumbling with his lighter, his long, clever fingers finally betrayed him; they were shaking too badly to strike a light. The lighter slipped from his trembling hand, fell silently to the ground. It was the final straw. “Oh, God,” he murmured, defeated at last. “Oh, my God.”

Gently, LeBeau retrieved the lighter and flicked it to life. Wordlessly, he held out the tiny flame. Newkirk just stared at it for a moment, then leaned forward and lit the cigarette, nodding his thanks. “I’m sorry, mate,” he said, trying to redon the tattered remnants of his usual insouciance. He wasn’t terribly successful, but he tried. “Don’t know what came over me. I’m sorry.”

“Whatever for? When last I became upset with the unfairness of the world, I hit you, _don’t you remember?_ You have done nothing worse than smoke without offering one to me.” LeBeau smiled, making it obvious that he understood... and that he would never mention this episode to anyone. That they were back to their usual patterns.

And it worked; Newkirk let out an involuntary bark of laughter. “Fair enough, mate,” he said, tossing LeBeau the pack. “You’ve already got the lighter; help yourself.” And as LeBeau did just that, Newkirk said, very quietly, “Thanks, Louie. Thanks for… well, everything. Thanks for listening.”

“ _But of course_ ,” LeBeau said. “We will take turns, yes? Next time I am in despair, you will listen.”

“Next time you’re in despair, don’t bloody hit me again, that’s all I ask,” Newkirk said, feeling a hint of a grin flicker across his face. A real one. “You’ve got a good arm on you.”

“I make no promises, _mon ami_ ,” LeBeau deadpanned.

“It figures,” Newkirk said. “Ah, well. I lived with a Peterson-shaped dent in my shin, I can handle a Louie-shaped dent or two. It’ll be smaller, at least.”

LeBeau snorted. “Do not be so certain of that.” After a moment, in a different tone of voice, he said, “No more secrets. It was you who paid Forrest to share his bunk with me, was it not?”

“No, I most certainly did not,” Newkirk said promptly. There was a beat or two of silence while they both contemplated the difference between telling the _exact_ truth and the _whole_ truth, then, with a rueful shrug, he admitted the rest. “That spot was mine to give. I paid him to keep quiet about it and not let you find out.”

“ _Bon Dieu_ ,” LeBeau shook his head. “Why did you do that?”

“Couldn’t think of a good reason not to.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Means you were new in camp, with no one in the barracks who even spoke your lingo. You needed a break or two. Plus, you’re a little ‘un, and I reckoned you’d freeze solid otherwise. Didn’t want that to happen, now did I? And besides, what I told Richmond was true. I _am_ in the cooler more often than I’m out of it. So what difference, right? It only made sense to trade. Forrest didn’t mind; you take up less room than me, and I’m told I kick.”

“Still playing the protector. After I told you not to do so. You are stubborn.”

“Look who’s talking. Look up ‘stubborn’ in the dictionary; there’s a rather nice portrait of you.”

“My dictionary has a much different picture,” LeBeau mused. “Newer edition. Or perhaps I mean New _kirk_ edition.”

“You’re a laugh riot, mate,” Newkirk said, rolling his eyes. “And as if you’re not just as much of a mother hen.”

“Another thing at which we must learn to take turns,” LeBeau clinched it. “As I said before. _Les Mousquetaires_. Eh, d’Artagnan?”

“More like the Charge of the Light Brigade, Lord Cardigan,” Newkirk replied.

“Joshua and Caleb,” LeBeau clinched it. “Come. Let us go back to the barracks.”

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

Author’s note: ‘The Three Musketeers,’ ironically enough, ends with the main characters splitting up and going their separate ways, leaving d’Artagnan alone and fairly miserable about it. ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade,’ by Tennyson, commemorated one of the most impressively stupid disasters in British military history, under the spectacularly inept command of one Lord Cardigan. (And yes, the sweater was named after him. From what I can tell, it was about his only positive contribution to history.) Joshua and Caleb, among others, were sent by Moses to take a look at the Promised Land after the Exodus from Egypt; they were the only two who delivered an honest report. Both Newkirk and LeBeau are being a bit facetious.


	8. Chapter 8

Life, such as it was, went on. Newcomers were often taken slightly aback upon seeing the Mutt-and-Jeff duo in action; the two of them sniped at each other constantly, unmercifully, and not at all subtly, which occasionally led some poor greenhorn to make the mistake of assuming they were mortal enemies and taking sides. At which point he found himself facing a united front, and no one ever tried it a second time.

They covered for each other with the Germans. Backed each other up with the other prisoners, not all of whom subscribed to the ‘we’re all in this together’ school of thought as regarded their captivity. Newkirk still bounced in and out of the cooler like a blue-clad pinball—over the course of that desperate first year, he’d built up a reputation as an incorrigible troublemaker, and that made him an easy scapegoat when the guards needed to look as though they were earning their pay—but he had stopped indiscriminately lashing out or antagonizing the guards. He didn’t need to anymore. Solitary confinement had, quietly and unobtrusively, ceased to be the mechanism he used to protect himself _from_ himself, and his behavior reflected that.

…Mostly.

While they did not resume their larder raids—they were all painfully aware that that the Kommandant’s promise to halve their bread rations was no idle threat—Newkirk did discover a certain flair for black marketing, and LeBeau an ability to strike the fear of God into any grocer who attempted to palm off bad produce. Some of the more easygoing and/or corrupt guards could be bought, and it helped immeasurably. It could not be said that the men of Barracks Two ate _well_. But they did eat.

LeBeau managed—somehow— to pull Newkirk through a bout of cholera that everyone, including the medics, agreed that he should have had no chance to survive. And when LeBeau, with a deep gash on his calf that was most emphatically _not_ caused by a less than successful attempt at circumventing the barbed wire fence, no sir, absolutely not, began displaying signs of blood poisoning, Newkirk tended him round the clock; the general consensus was that he must have bullied, badgered, or otherwise browbeaten the Angel of Death into leaving the Frenchman alone, because it certainly was not attributable to any known medical technique or treatment.

In short, as LeBeau had put it, they ‘took turns.’ They had to. Having someone to lean on made camp life at least survivable, if no less hellish, but there was no shortage of dark times for any of them. Birthdays, holidays, and, perhaps worst of all, camp anniversaries came and went, grim reminders of the passage of time, of wasted time that none of them were ever going to get back. LeBeau celebrated his birthday and his sixth month of imprisonment in the same week, if ‘celebration’ could be said to be the correct word. It hit him hard, but, credit where it was due, he kept his word; no one else was hit, either metaphorically or literally.

It was the same with news of the world outside. There was no radio in camp, no newspapers, not even mail; nothing but whatever propaganda the Germans chose to inflict on them. The old-timers were hungrier for information than they were for anything else—food, drink, or even sex, which was saying one hell of a lot—but when they received it, usually via new prisoners, who could be counted on to know at least vague outlines of how the war was truly going, it was equal parts pleasure and pain. On the one hand, they desperately needed to know what was happening back home, needed to remember what they had been fighting for in the first place, needed to remember that the world outside the fence still existed. On the other hand, so much of the news was so unrelentingly bad that, in retrospect, even the uncertainty seemed kinder by comparison. Newkirk’s reaction to learning about the Blitz, after it had already been going on for months, was something LeBeau never liked to remember afterwards.

Late that summer, the camp’s Kommandant—a lovely fellow by the name of Muller, just the nicest bloke you could ever hope to see drawn and quartered—was caught doing… something… and was replaced. None of the prisoners ever found out exactly what he’d done. Some theorized that he’d been caught with his fingers in the camp till. Others disagreed. That is to say, no one doubted that he’d been lining his own pockets at their expense, but they thought that any brass who happened to learn of it would, in all likelihood, have simply demanded a piece of the action, received it, and the matter would have ended there. Some thought that the Kommandant had been caught doing something unnatural, something the Nazis frowned upon; probably involving farm animals in some way. Others, less given to inquiry and introspection, just shrugged it off as God’s long-overdue justice finally catching up with him. The truth, as it happened, was simpler and uglier; it seemed that he had both a Jewish grandmother and enemies who did not hesitate to make use of that fact. The outcome was predictable. As a loyal Party member, he was allowed the option of handling the matter quietly, and he took it. Perhaps the irony of his situation crossed his mind before the bullet did. Or perhaps not. Not that it mattered much either way.

In any case, Muller’s replacement, one Colonel Lange, turned up in the dog days of August. It took less than two weeks for the prisoners to realize how good they’d had it up until then, and that however bad things seemed, they could always get worse. Some of them started vocally hoping that whatever hidden sin had put paid to Muller would crop back up and lead to a third change of command. After all, the general argument went, short of Vlad the Impaler, how could the Krauts possibly find someone worse than Lange? The more pessimistic of the kriegies sourly chided their bunkmates for tempting fate. And then, what with one thing and another, it was a shock to realize that 1941 was nearly gone.

Richmond was halfheartedly sweeping the Kommandant’s office one morning and resenting every second of it. It was somewhat difficult to differentiate the bits he’d already cleaned from the ones he hadn’t yet gotten to; so far as he was concerned, the Jerries could force him to work, but they could not force him either to care or to do a good job. He was considering the merits of spit-polishing the inside of Lange’s coffee cup when he heard the man talking on the telephone. Richmond’s German was scanty at best, but he had picked up enough to understand words such as ‘important,’ ‘inspection,’ and, most importantly, ‘Red Cross.’

Deciding that the office looked clean enough to be going on with, he hurried back to the barracks.

“I was just in the office,” he said. “Lackwit Lange was on the telephone. From what I could make out, the Red Cross will be coming here to perform an inspection. I don’t know when, but I’d imagine it’s soon.”

LeBeau smiled. “Wonderful! We will have a great deal to tell them when they arrive. Should we list our complaints alphabetically, or in order of importance?”

“Oh, for my money, I’d say the latter, unquestionably. This could be it,” Forrest said, his sunken eyes lighting up. “This could be our salvation. The Red Cross takes a dim view of the sort of cruelty and neglect that’s par for the course around here. All we have to do is get one of us close enough to the representative to pass on a letter detailing the conditions, and they’ll have to do something about it!”

“Even if we can’t get close enough to contact them directly, they’re bound to do a barracks inspection,” Richmond said. “We’re stacked in here like cordwood. There’s no way that’s permissible under the Geneva Conventions.”

“Oh, they’ll do a barracks inspection, all right,” Newkirk cut in. “And I’ll bet you anything you care to name that they’ll be shown around a bleeding palace, with two blankets for every man and fluffy new mattresses, a roaring fire in the stove and probably gingham curtains at the windows. Then Lange will show them the mess, and stone the crows, what’ll they see but the Krauts fixing us a three course gourmet meal, with port and cigars to follow. We’ll all be deloused for the occasion, the guards will smile for the camera, and everything will look as pretty as a picture. And five minutes after the Red Cross blokes have finished their tea and been sent on their merry way, they’ll strip us back down to nothing.”

“We can still tell them the truth, no matter what sort of show the _Boche_ put on,” LeBeau said. “A letter, as Forrest said, if nothing else.”

Newkirk shook his head. “We say anything— _anything_ —to make the Kommandant look bad, and he’ll put us through the tortures of the damned. Lange can’t risk a bad report. Not after what happened to Muller. Even if the Red Cross chaps believe our story, they won’t have the authority to do anything on the spot, and they won’t be here tomorrow. Lange will. Not worth it.”

“I never took you for a coward,” Richmond said.

“Well, there was your _first_ mistake,” Newkirk shot back. “But one thing you can say for us cowards—we tend to think out all the angles before we make our move, instead of rushing in with the fools.”

“What are you suggesting, then? That we lie? That we say all is well when it is not?” LeBeau asked. “How will that improve anything at all?”

“Yes. We’re going to say just exactly what the Krauts would want us to say. ‘The Kommandant is very humane. The Germans are very good to us. We’re treated according to the Geneva Convention. No complaints.’ But there are ways and ways of saying it, if you get my drift.”

Forrest looked disgusted. “What on earth are you talking about? This could be our only chance, Newkirk!”

Newkirk nodded. “Too right, it could,” he agreed. “Look. It’s like this.” He smiled, clapped a congratulatory hand on Forrest’s shoulder. “You’re a fine fellow, mate,” he said heartily. Then he turned to Richmond and snorted, a look of utter disdain on his face. “ _You’re_ a fine fellow, mate,” he sneered, straight-arming him back a pace or two. His demeanor altering yet again, he sidled closer to LeBeau, ran a teasing hand up the chef’s bicep, and purred, “And you’re a _fine_ fellow… mate.”

LeBeau pulled away, annoyed. Newkirk laughed. “See? Same words every time. Same actions, even—my right hand to your left shoulder. And three different messages that not even a fool could mistake. That’s what we’re going to do.”

“Watch who you’re shoving; I outrank you.” Richmond made a face. “I’d rather take our chances with the letter, if it’s all the same to you. You’re seriously suggesting we flirt with the Red Cross representatives?”

“What you do in your spare time’s no business of mine, but no. Not flirting. We’re just going to tell them that the ruddy Krauts treat us better than our own mums did. Oh, and before I forget, someone do me a favor and belt me one, all right? Something nice and visible.”

The other men exchanged looks. “He’s gone mad,” Forrest said, with genuine pity in his voice.

“I most certainly have not. Go on. Blacken my eye,” Newkirk urged.

“Why?”

Newkirk sighed. “So I can stand before the Red Cross looking like five miles of bad road and swear on my mother’s grave that the Krauts didn’t work me over.”

“Newkirk, what the hell are you talking about?”

“This. I’m talking about _this_ ,” he said. Before their eyes, his body language shifted one more time; he cowered, suddenly seeming smaller, and the palpable terror in his face was unnerving. “What, sir? No, sir… the Germans are… they’re very good to us, sir,” he got out, his eyes flicking back and forth between Forrest and an imaginary guard, silently begging for approval, and he made a small, nervous sound, somewhere between a cowed whimper and a hysterical giggle. His breath came in short, panicky gasps. “What’s that, sir? Was I beat? N-no, no! Never, sir! Never laid a finger on me! No, sir; I… they’re very good to us. They’re… they’re very humane. Very… humane. Sir.” He straightened back up, shedding the servile cringe and sliding back to his usual persona so swiftly as to be almost disconcerting. “Now, if it were you, would you believe a single word of that rubbish?”

Forrest blinked. “No. No, I wouldn’t,” he said slowly. He nodded as it all came together. “And not a word in it that Jerry could object to.”

“Right. We all say the same words in the same order, and it’ll sound memorized and phony. Reel it off like you’re half asleep, or cringe and repeat yourself a lot, or just stare at your shoes and mumble, but it’ll set off an alarm or two in their heads, if anything will.”

“…Right, I see. It’ll look like the Krauts beat those answers into us,” Richmond said. “That’s actually pretty damned clever.”

“Glad you approve. We’ve got to work fast; this won’t work unless every man in camp is on the same page.”

“The Kommandant is very humane. The Germans are very good to us. We’re treated according to the Geneva Convention. No complaints, sir,” Forrest ticked them off on his fingers. “Anything we’re asked, that’s what we answer.”

Newkirk nodded. “Exactly. Tell them what they want to hear, and with any luck, they’ll hear what we want them to know. We want Lange to think that he’s up for the bleeding Iron Cross right up until the moment his superiors come down on him like a ton of bricks. It’s not always what you say. It’s how you say it, eh, Louie? Pleasure to meet you, right?”

“ _Screw you, too,_ ” LeBeau agreed, a smile tugging at the edge of his mouth. “What are we waiting for? Let us go talk to the men in the other barracks.”

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

Author’s note: Mutt and Jeff were the titular characters of a well-known American comic strip, running from the early 1900s to the 80s. Mutt (the tall one) and Jeff (the short one) were a pair of schemers, so it fits, but their outstanding physical characteristic, the one usually being referenced when their names are used as descriptors, was the extreme and comical difference in their heights. I don’t know if the strip ever made it to France, but it was popular enough in England that ‘Mutt and Jeff,’ sometimes elided to simply ‘mutton,’ was incorporated into rhyming slang as a term meaning ‘deaf.’


	9. Chapter 9

The sun gleamed dully off the barbed wire; it was about the only thing in the camp that hadn’t been spit-polished for the occasion. The Red Cross representatives, two of them, had been escorted into the camp by several black-clad SS officers who were doing their level best to mask their normal grim demeanors behind masks of stiff geniality. Colonel Lange met them at the gate, his men ranged behind him at rigid attention. He was also doing his best to mask his usual expression of sly cruelty behind a patently false smile. It didn’t suit him, and he wasn’t especially good at it; mostly, his attempts at cordiality just made him look constipated, or as if he’d just bitten into an apple and found half a worm, but the effort was there.

The prisoners were also arranged for inspection in front of their barracks. They all looked neat and clean; as Newkirk had predicted, they’d been freshly deloused, laundry soap had been issued for the first time in three months, and the camp barber had made the rounds at lightning speed. The results were… about what might have been expected. He knew how to produce precisely two styles—'boot-camp buzz cut’ and ‘shaved for head lice,’ and you never knew ahead of time which was forthcoming on any given day. No two sideburns in the entire camp were the same length. Some of the men only had one apiece.

The senior Red Cross official, a fussy-looking man called Stephens, strolled past the men of Barracks Three, a guard at his elbow. He was a bit unnerved; he counted twenty-seven men, and twenty-six of them had thousand-yard stares that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up straight. The twenty-seventh, a red-haired sergeant, just looked tired and defeated.

The guard paused in front of the barracks and barked, “Achtung!”

The dead-eyed men snapped to attention, still without altering their numb expressions an iota. “Oh, good heavens; no need for that. Er, at ease,” Stephens said, uncomfortably.

They didn’t budge. With a smirk, the German left them waiting for a moment, showing his power, before repeating the order and letting them relax. “This is Sergeant O’Meara,” said the guard, reading from his clipboard. “The barracks chief.”

“I’m Gerald Stephens, from the International Red Cross,” he said. “Nice to meet you, Sergeant.”

“Yes sir thank you sir,” said O’Meara in one breath, looking at something just over Stephens’ left shoulder. It took Stephens a startled moment to realize that it was the guard, looming behind him like a bad omen. He took a casual step closer to the Irishman, lowered his voice. “Are you treated well, Sergeant? How are the men?”

The sergeant lowered his voice to match, but didn’t take his eyes off the guard. “We’re treated according to the Geneva Convention, sir. The Kommandant is very humane.”

“Very good! Glad to hear it,” Stephens said as heartily as he could. He strolled along the row, picked out a scrawny erk who had almost certainly lied about his age to enlist. “What’s your name?”

“Slade, sir. Aircraftman, second class,” he said. “The Germans are very good to us, sir. We’re treated according to the Geneva Convention, sir.”

Stephens blinked. He hadn’t _asked_ yet. “Well, glad to hear it. Carry on.”

It was the same everywhere. How was the food? The Germans were very good to them. Did they need anything? They were treated according to the Geneva Convention. Did they want him to contact their families? The Kommandant was very humane. Even on the few occasions he was able to momentarily distract his German handlers, which he would have thought might loosen a few tongues, he got nothing more out of the prisoners than a few mumbled words indicating nothing short of complete satisfaction with their situation. No complaints, sir.

By now more than a little unnerved, he conferred with his associate, who had been inspecting some of the other barracks; it turned out that both of them had essentially the same story to tell. In the same words. With the same unease. They had visited a great many POW camps, and they knew what to expect. It wasn’t this. What they were seeing was profoundly disturbing.

The prisoners began filing into the mess hall for lunch; Stephens and the other Red Cross representative, a man about ten years his junior, followed. They watched as each prisoner was handed a brimming dish of chicken soup and a healthy chunk of white bread; more precisely, they watched the expressions on their faces as they saw the food.

“Look,” Rowland murmured. “The men have been doing an admirable job of play-acting, but they haven’t quite been able to keep it up. Look at them. They look like they’ve just been handed the Holy Grail and the keys to Buckingham Palace, rolled into one. This isn’t the usual sort of fare they’ve been living on.”

“Come now, old chap,” Stephens muttered back. “I could have told you that ten minutes after we arrived. If these boys were any thinner they’d be transparent.”*

A small man in a red scarf, who was not quite dragging a taller man in RAF blues, entered the mess hall and shoved his friend into place at the end of the chow line. Neither spoke as the line inched forward. When they reached the front, the small man accepted his tray, then, as if it were routine, turned to make certain that his friend had also been served, grabbed him by the arm, and steered him bodily to a table. Meek and pitiful as a beaten dog, he went where he was told. The smaller man muttered something in French that neither of the Red Cross representatives could quite make out, but the Englishman seemed to have no problem understanding; he cringed visibly, and lowered his head a fraction more.

“Good God,” Rowland whispered, aghast. “What in hell did they _do_ to that one?”

Now, as it happened, LeBeau had actually been telling Newkirk that he was the biggest ham this side of John Barrymore and should be ashamed of himself, and Newkirk had ducked his head to hide a smirk that would have been distinctly out of character, but as a bit of stage business, the interplay worked quite well, so _that_ was all right.

“You can plainly see, gentlemen,” said Lange. “As laid out by the Geneva Convention, the prisoners are more than adequately fed. My own men eat no better.”

“Yes, yes, I see,” Stephens said agreeably. He saw, all right.

One of the German sergeants, a man who, from the looks of him, wasn’t missing any meals, and in fact, might be indulging in a few extra, just in case, smiled nervously. “Ja, ja, the prisoners eat very well. Verrrry well. Why, it was only the other day one of them said to me, Sergeant Schultz, he said— because that is my name, I am Sergeant Schultz—he said to me, Sergeant Schultz, never in my life have I had food as good as the food here in Germany!” Warming to his subject, his eyes increasingly desperate as he struggled under the weight of the lies, he continued, “In fact, I would not be in the least surprised if they wanted to stay even after the war is over, because they are all so very, very happy here. No, Herr Stephens, I would not be in the least surprised!”

Stephens and Rowland exchanged glances. “That’s very good to hear, Sergeant,” Rowland said soothingly, before he could make a third attempt at it. “The prisoners have been telling us how well they are treated, too.”

He recoiled, shocked. “They have?” He blinked, recovered. “I mean, of _course_ they have. They are all very happy here. Just because they are our enemies does not mean we may not be friends, ja?”

“That is a very enlightened attitude, Sergeant Schultz, and may I say, Kommandant Lange, it does credit to your administration of this camp,” Stephens said, smoothly rescuing the situation. And the sergeant.

Lange, who had been giving Schultz a very sour look, scrambled to paste the unctuous smile back on his face. “Thank you, gentlemen. But it is the glorious Third Reich I serve that truly deserves the credit.”

“I think we can all agree on that,” Stephens said, with an unctuous smile of his own. He took another look around the mess hall. Some of the men were hunched protectively over their trays as if they expected them to be taken away at any moment. They probably _did_ expect just that, and were inhaling the food, taking no chances. Others were eating slowly, with a sort of disbelieving reverence that made something in his chest twist painfully. The Kommandant could make a show of this single meal, but he could not disguise the plain fact that every man in his custody was gaunt and severely underfed. He could force his charges to feign, if not happiness, at least content, but he could not force them to make it believable. This was wrong; everything about this camp was subtly wrong.

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

“I think we’re getting through to them,” Richmond murmured. “The one in the brown suit with the glasses—he keeps looking around when he thinks Lange isn’t watching, and he looks like he’s about to jump out of his skin.”

“Spoke with him earlier. He asked me about the mail situation,” Forrest muttered back. “Whether we were getting our packages regularly, you know.”

“Which did you tell him? That the Geneva Convention is kept or how good the Germans are?” asked LeBeau. “This soup is not bad, but I would have added some rosemary.”

“Both, actually,” Forrest said. “I _wanted_ to tell him to ask Lange. If that old vulture isn’t selling them on the black market, I’ll eat my hat. And please—don’t mention Rosemary. I had a sweetheart by that name, before the war.”

“Had? What happened to her?” asked Richmond, concerned.

“Joined the WAAF after I was shot down, and married an officer six months later,” Forrest said wryly. “She sent me an announcement.”

“ _I beg your pardon,_ ” LeBeau apologized. “What about garlic? Does anyone have any objections to that?”

“Mate, we all have to share one very cramped little barracks. _Everyone_ would object to you putting more garlic in the food,” Newkirk murmured, his shoulders still hunched defensively. “There’s a dire shortage of working gas masks in camp, after all.”

“I did not ask you. I asked for the opinion of those whose taste I respect. You, _uncouth peasant that you are,_ would not know fine _cuisine_ if it bit you in the nose,” LeBeau said with no particular heat. Newkirk was still very much in character, and there was just no fun to be had in taunting a man who looked as though he expected to be dragged away for a beating at any moment.

“My nose is the whole point,” Newkirk, who had no such problems, replied. “After that last pot of stew, we had three dozen men all sweating pure aioli, and you know we’re not allowed to open the ruddy windows at night. I thought we were all going to asphyxiate before dawn. And around midnight, when the _other_ issue started up, I flat out hoped I _would_. It would at least cut short the suffering.”

Forrest stifled a chuckle that would have given the whole game away. “True on all counts, but that’s quite enough of that,” he said, before LeBeau could return fire. “Look, we’ve got the Red Cross chaps thinking. That’s as good a start as we could have hoped for, I daresay. You’re all doing a perfectly splendid job of it, but we can’t let ourselves get sloppy. We’ve a ways to go yet.”

“I think we’re supposed to have a lovely game of football during our exercise period,” Richmond said, wiping his dish clean with the last bite of bread. “They might even give us a real football this time.”

“Be still, my heart. Think we can get Lange to referee?” asked Forrest.

“Better yet; think we can get him to _play_? I promise—I’ll only foul him four, maybe five times at the most. His eyes will uncross by Thursday, I’m sure, and there’s probably a dentist in Hammelberg who could fix him up afterwards,” said Newkirk.

LeBeau, for want of a napkin, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand until he thought he could trust himself not to smile. “Peterson is not yet recovered enough to do it. Perhaps you should.”

“Good God, LeBeau; don’t encourage him,” Forrest sighed. “Newkirk, Lange would have you drawn and quartered; please don’t make me have to watch that.”

“Well, then. I’d certainly hate to inconvenience you gents,” Newkirk said. “So I guess— Oi! Here comes trouble.”

As Stephens approached, he saw rather than heard the men go silent; they’d been speaking far too softly for any stray words to escape the narrow confines of their bench, but even that low murmur died away. Three of the men looked up at him immediately; the small man in red with a burning anger in his eyes that his blank expression could not entirely negate, the two sergeants, one looking exhausted, the other sullen. With a sharp nudge in the ribs that looked as though it was trying to be unobtrusive, the Frenchman got his friend to look up as well, and Stephens found himself staring into a pair of green eyes that seemed to reflect all the horrors that man had ever devised to inflict on his fellow man.

He took an involuntary step back.

One of the others, the weary one, tried to smile. “Sir. Sergeant Forrest, RAF,” he said.

“Stephens,” he said briefly. “I… ah, well. Pleasure to make your acquaintances. How long have you chaps been... here?”

The sullen one pursed his lips. “Not sure, sir. What month is it?” Recalling his manners, he ripped off a salute. “Sergeant Richmond, RAF, sir.”

“November,” Stephens said quietly. “Seventeenth of November. 1941.” He wasn’t sure why he had tacked on that last bit. Surely they knew what year it was. They had to. Hadn’t they?

“Eighteen months, then, sir,” said Forrest. “Both Richmond and I. Since Dunkirk, sir. But we’ve been treated according to the Geneva Convention,” he tacked on, as something of an afterthought.

“Corporal Louis LeBeau, Free French Air Force. Thirteen months, sir,” said the angry one, in a measured tone that did nothing to hide the bitterness. “ _Les Allemands,_ they have been very good to us, and _le Kommandant_ is humane.”

The silence dragged on for a moment, just this side of unbearable. Eventually Forrest, biting his lip, said, “And this is Corporal Peter Newkirk. RAF. He’s… I think it’s been two years. Or thereabouts. Sir.”

LeBeau nudged him again. Thus prompted, he took a quick, terrified breath, and whispered, “I… I have no complaints. Sir.”

Richmond’s lip twitched. “Please, sir; no offense intended. He’s… a quiet sort, sir. Never has very much to say.”

LeBeau, emotional Frenchman that he was, had to look away for a moment, overcome.

Forrest’s eyes darkened. “The Kommandant… has taken _especially_ good care of him.”

“I see,” Stephens said, his flesh crawling. “Well. Keep your chins up, gentlemen; the war can’t last forever,” he said inanely. Wanting, very, very badly, to be somewhere else. Anywhere else.

He was saved by the rotund German sergeant, who, at some unspoken signal from the Kommandant, had apparently decided that luncheon was over. “Achtung!” he bellowed. “Raus, raus! Everybody, back to the barracks! Back, back, back! Eins, zwei! Eins, zwei!” He glanced at the Kommandant, and added, in a much more conversational tone, “If you please, mein Herren?”

In the first coordinated move Stephens had yet seen from him, the corporal was on his feet, at such rigid attention that he all but vibrated. He was followed, a heartbeat or so later, by the rest of the men, and in a matter of moments, the entire mess hall was empty as they were marched away, leaving behind them only the Red Cross representatives, the Kommandant, and a silence filled with appalling questions and even more appalling suspicions.


	10. Chapter 10

Back at the barracks, they were finally able to let out the accumulated laughter of a fairly tense morning. It helped.

Despite the nervous tension that still screamed through his every fiber, Newkirk looked, and felt, as pleased as the cat who’d caught the canary and then topped it off with a pint of cream. The scam was working; he could just _tell_ it was working. They’d pulled it off. A couple more hours of the dog and pony show, then a few days for the report to make it up the chain, and then… well, actually, probably not much. Not for them, anyway.

The Red Cross would know that conditions were bad. They probably already suspected—how could they _not?—_ but now they would be sure of it. Given that knowledge, they might be able to bring some pressure to bear on Berlin, or they might not. If they did try to make Berlin toe the mark, the Krauts might comply, or they might respond by making the problem— and the prisoners— disappear. The kriegies of Stalag 13 might well go to join the Glorious Fallen, but, and this was the important part, they bloody well wouldn’t go quietly. London would know that they had fought with everything they had, and the kriegies would know that they had at least given the Allies the information and thus the ammunition that might help save others. If that was all the satisfaction he and his mates were going to get out of it, then so be it. It wasn’t enough, not by a long shot, but it was something. It was something they could be proud of, at least.

For now, they laughed; laughed at the madness of it all, laughed for the sheer relief that, at last, they were no longer alone. The world beyond the wire, as personified by a pair of weedy looking civilians, had heard their voices. Through the unlikely mechanism of silence, _they_ _had been heard_. It was glorious. It was bittersweet. It was ridiculous. And they laughed, because it was that or cry.

“Pierre, _mon pote_ , you were dreadful,” LeBeau said, when he could speak again. “Positively cruel. That poor man will never be the same.”

“Good,” Newkirk said, grinning like a fox. “Could probably do with a bit of a change.”

“I just hope the poor blighter can keep it together long enough to write his report,” Richmond said. “I thought he was going to faint dead away at your feet.”

“Oh, as if you lot weren’t just as bad. What _month_ is it? We’re POWs, not the bloody Count of Monte Cristo!”

“That was hardly his most inventive lie,” LeBeau said meaningfully.

Forrest laughed out loud. “True. When he got to the bit about how quiet a fellow Newkirk is, I thought I was going to give the whole show away right then and there.”

“I know, I know; I went too far,” said Richmond. “It was completely unbelievable. Perhaps, old chap, you should practice this role a bit more. Say, try not talking for the next six months or so?”

“Insults and abuse, that’s all I get around here. Some bloody mates _you_ lot are,” Newkirk mock-grumbled, rolling his eyes. “At least the Krauts don’t bother pretending they’re on my side!”

“Ah, Pierre, we are simply trying to help you improve your acting,” LeBeau mock-soothed right back. “Do not be so touchy.”

“Touchy, he says. I’ll give you touchy,” Newkirk said. “I had to put up with you manhandling me halfway across the compound and back. If I haven’t got five little finger-shaped bruises on my arm tomorrow, it’ll be a bleeding miracle.”

“The stage is a cruel mistress, and we must all expect to suffer for our art,” LeBeau said airily. “I knew an actress once—at _Les Folies Bergere_ —who used to tell me so.” He thought about that for a moment, a small smile on his face. “Of course, she never seemed to be suffering when we—”

“Please, LeBeau. For the love of God, man, show some mercy. Eighteen months. My heart can’t take it,” Richmond said.

“Who’s concerned with their ruddy _heart_? I can think of a few other bits and pieces that are in much greater need of some attention—”

“Well, don’t look at me, old chap.”

“Believe me, mate, I wasn’t. It hasn’t been _that_ long.” Newkirk glanced out the window. Hmm. The older of the two visitors—what was his name again? Right, Stephens, that was it— closely attended by their beloved Kommandant Lange, the bloody sadistic swine. From the looks of it, he was pontificating to the poor Red Cross geezer, and probably had been for some time. A few paces behind them, his rifle in his hand and a scowl on his face, stomped old Bauer, one of the nastier of the guards.

The scam was working, in its way… but it would be so much more effective if they were to add a few extra details. Something to really make the audience gasp. Like blood, or at least the possibility of it; blood always got their attention. Every carnie knew that.

Actors expect to suffer for their art. So do prisoners. Newkirk stood up, stretched. “Back in a tick, lads.”

“Where are you going? You are supposed to be too traumatized to move.”

“I’m visiting the bleeding latrine, Louie. Believe you me, if you try chivvying me there and walking me through that little chore the way you did lunch, I _will_ end up too flipping traumatized to move, and I can pretty much guarantee that you won’t be any better off. LeBeau-shaped bruises on my arms are one thing, but that’s as far as I’m willing to go.”

LeBeau snorted agreement as Newkirk stood up, shook himself to loosen stiff muscles, and reassumed his pitiful, broken air as he opened the door and slipped out. “It is… it is almost frightening how well he does that,” he said almost to himself.

Forrest ran his fingers through his newly cut hair, and grimaced at the places where the clippers had gouged near-bald spots into his scalp. “I know, LeBeau. Credit where it’s due, he’s a hell of an actor, but… well. You’ve been good for him, let me just put it that way.”

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

Newkirk, in the spirit of lending verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative, did in fact visit the latrine. Like everything else in camp, it had been refurbished to a state that rendered it, if not precisely pleasant, at least tolerable, and taking advantage of that doubtless temporary state of affairs was only sensible. Someone had removed the photographs of the Fuhrer that the prisoners habitually tacked to the sides of the slit trenches; that was a pity. It was nice to have something to aim for, after all. They’d simply have to acquire some more newspaper cuttings when they emptied the Kommandant’s wastepaper basket. Perhaps a nice picture of Himmler next time.

He took the long way back to the barracks, keeping well behind the little inspection party. This needed careful timing… He’d picked up a fair bit of German, mostly by osmosis, over the course of his stay here in the Rathole Ritz. Some of it was the useful sort of German that led to civil conversations and, occasionally, interesting eavesdropping. Some of it was the sort of German that led to black eyes, split lips and, occasionally, broken ribs.

No prizes for guessing which sort was going to come in handier here and now. _Blimey, if I survive this, LeBeau is going to kill me._ The guard paused for a moment to adjust his belt; Newkirk seized the moment. Sidling up close to Bauer, a winning smile on his face, he quietly made an observation or two on the sensitive subject of Bauer’s masculinity, and followed them up with few comments about Bauer’s mother that were so filthy that even he almost blushed.

The irony inherent in the fact that he had learned several of the phrases in question from Bauer himself was not lost on Newkirk as the guard, with an infuriated roar, swung the butt of his rifle directly into Newkirk’s solar plexus, knocking him to the ground. He curled into a defensive ball, whimpering pitiably, as Bauer followed up that first blow with a flurry of kicks.

“ _BAUER!_ ” Lange’s voice was, if anything, even more enraged than the guard’s had been. He had been a few paces ahead; he had therefore not seen or heard anything of the prelude, but he knew that the incident would not look good in the report. “You idiot! What are you doing? Stop that immediately!”

“Herr Kommandant, this dog of an Englander… he insulted me,” Bauer explained. Even he realized, halfway through the sentence, how ridiculous it sounded.

Newkirk, for his part, remained on the ground in a fetal position, protecting his head with his hands and trembling as convincingly as he could. _Right-o, my old china. Go ahead and try to justify making your boss look bad in front of the outsiders, especially after all the work he’s put into soft soaping them. Explain the part the vicious beatings play in your humane and kindly administration of this camp. Go on. I really want to hear it. I’ll just bet Stephens does, too._

Lange, his veneer of avuncular benevolence shattered beyond repair, had apparently forgotten all about Stephens. He was far too busy screaming at Bauer about the bad impression he had made to even notice the worse one he was making himself. His tirade wasn’t especially coherent. It certainly wasn’t especially benevolent. It did involve the words ‘Russian front,’ which he repeated with what must have, for Bauer at least, been more than somewhat alarming frequency, and ‘immediate transfer’ appeared a few times as well, a few old favorites like ‘dummkopf’ and ‘schweinepriester’ made cameo appearances, and when he started discussing the desirability of having Bauer assigned as a human mine flail, Newkirk, unable to resist, peeked up through his fingers. Lange, still howling like a banshee, was storming to his office, with the apparent intent of filling out the transfer paperwork then and there.

Bauer, who had been relieved of his rifle, was being frogmarched after him, his arms twisted behind his back by two of his former colleagues, and it would seem that his chances for a long and fulfilling career had just taken an abrupt nosedive. Good riddance.

Stephens, seemingly forgotten, and, for the first time since his arrival, completely unattended by Germans, bent down to help Newkirk to his feet. “There, now, old chap, you’re going to be just fi—oh! It… it’s you. Heavens. Take it easy, lad. No one’s going to hurt you anymore. Are you all right? Can I help you?”

Newkirk stood up straight, disdaining any assistance. Looking the other man directly in the eye, he nodded sharply. “Too right, you can, sir,” he said under his breath. “Look. Rate we’re going, none of us will see the end of the war, and we’ve got men what aren’t going to see the end of the year. We’re about done in, sir. Either help us, or just send a bomber to put us out of our bloody misery.”

With a quick follow-me gesture, he started back across the compound. He’d kept his head down through the whole thing, and Lange had been somewhat distracted; with any luck, he would get so involved with reducing Bauer to flinders that identifying the prisoner who had spoiled his little pantomime would become a secondary consideration, but there was certainly no use hanging around waiting for the Kommandant’s return. It really would be just his luck to get thrown in the cooler as a punishment for being beaten.

Stephens stared at his retreating back. _He did that intentionally. All of it. He incited the guard to attack him… which led to that ghastly temper tantrum from Lange... just so he could talk to me alone? What is going on in this camp?_

Stephens hurried to catch up with the man. “You staged that. The beating… and that performance at lunch! You staged all of it… didn’t you?”

“Not all of it, sir. The Krauts did most of the staging. I just gave you a little peek at how this place works when your lot isn’t nosing around.” He opened the door to the barracks, let them both in.

“Pierre! _What the hell happened out there—_ Oh. Monsieur Stephens?” LeBeau looked from Newkirk, who had his arm wrapped around his middle in a way with which they were all, alas, quite familiar, to the man in the neat gray suit, who looked stunned.

“It’s all right, Louie. I’ve… illustrated our situation a bit, is all.”

“Who did this? What did you do?”

“Bauer,” Newkirk said briefly. “Who looks on track to be taking an extended holiday in Stalingrad, so the day hasn’t been a total waste.” He nodded towards Stephens. “None of you lot would help me fake a beating, so I had to do something to show him what the screws are like. I think our friend here gets it now.”

Forrest exhaled sharply. “Trust you for that, Newkirk. Right, then. Let’s start over, shall we, Mr. Stephens, sir?”

“I’d like that, yes,” Stephens said. “Now… it’s Sergeant Forrest, I believe? Please. I gather that conditions are… shall we say ‘not good’?… but what can we do to help? What do you chaps need?”

Richmond barked a laugh. “Wrong question. What _don’t_ we need? Food. Heat. Medicine. Blankets. Clothing. The boys who were captured in summer kit are in rather bad straits when winter rolls around.”

“We could ring the changes on the basic necessities we’re lacking, which is all of them, but I’ll be blunt. We need a Kommandant who doesn’t run his camp as if he’d trying to outdo the damned Marquis de Sade,” Forrest said. “Someone who doesn’t think the Geneva Convention is a series of, at best, humorous suggestions.”

“I don’t know if I have the ability to influence German personnel assignments,” Stephens said slowly.

“Do you have the ability to try?” Newkirk’s voice was harsh, and his gaze pierced Stephens like a bayonet. “Do the Protecting Powers do any actual ruddy protecting, or are they too busy having tea? We appreciate the sympathy, but if that’s all you’ve got to offer, hanging around in here looking solemn won’t do any of us much good.”

“Oh, you have my word that I’ll do my best for you lads,” Stephens promised. “I must say, you’ve changed your tune a bit since lunch. You’re quite the actor, Corporal. All of you chaps are. Whichever version of you is the real one, you’re quite convincing.” He contemplated the men, his eyes hardening as he evaluated. “Yes. Quite convincing indeed.”

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

Author’s note: To ‘ring the changes’ means something like ‘to be tiresomely thorough, go through all the variations.’ It derives from the art of change ringing, a form of music played on church bells that involves playing all the bells in all possible combinations. Given, say, three bells, tuned to A, B, and C, the ringers might first strike the bells in the order ABC, then BAC, CAB, and so forth. Very English, very methodical, very mathematical. It’s interesting in the abstract, but when listening to it for more than a couple of minutes at a time, I always start getting the image of a whole lot of assorted cookware falling down a flight of stairs. And a migraine.


	11. Chapter 11

At that unpropitious moment, the barracks door swung open, revealing Lange, accompanied by one of the SS men and the portly guard, who, predictably, bellowed, “Achtung!”

All the prisoners were on their feet before he’d reached the second syllable, their faces wary and blank. It did not escape Stephens’ notice that they closed ranks, ever so slightly, as if trying to shield Newkirk from Lange’s glare. He hoped it escaped Lange’s.

“Ah, Herr Stephens,” Lange said, that oily smile back on his face. “I must apologize for leaving you alone. Camp business waits for no man, you understand.”

“Of course, Herr Kommandant,” Stephens said smoothly. “I’ve enjoyed meeting with the prisoners; I appreciated your giving me the opportunity.”

Lange’s face tightened, the smile dribbling away at the edges. “I see,” he said sharply. “I imagine it has been… enjoyable for them, as well.”

“I do hope so,” Stephens said smoothly. “I never was much of a conversationalist, but I do try. They’ve been telling me quite a bit about your management of this camp, Herr Kommandant, and, frankly, sir, I am quite amazed by what I heard.”

The blood drained from Forrest’s face; LeBeau flushed, and Richmond’s lips tightened. All of them were thinking essentially the same thing, and it was not complimentary. _That damned idiot civilian!_ was perhaps the most printable version. Anger was a far safer reaction than thinking about Lange’s likely reaction to this betrayal.

Newkirk alone stayed impassive, mentally cursing himself for bringing the ( _damned idiot civilian_ _, or, rather, some other, more colorful, terms to that effect,_ ) into the barracks, for starting this whole thing off at all. _Couldn’t leave well enough alone. Had to be too bleeding clever for my own good..._

“Yes,” Stephens continued, cheerfully oblivious to any of the byplay. “I could see from the moment I walked into the camp that they’re all in rather shocking physical condition, and it’s my duty to report that, you see. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t ask the men to tell me a bit more about their treatment since their capture. I was appalled, utterly _appalled_ , to hear how the camp was run under your predecessor, and I must say, sir, it seems that you’ve jolly well had your work cut out for you bringing them back up to form these last few months. Well done, Kommandant. You’ve impressed me greatly.”

Lange relaxed. “I but do my humble best for the honor of the Fatherland and the Fuhrer,” he said airily. “But I was looking for the prisoner that Bauer attacked. I’m sure he is in need of some medical assistance, which I of course would not wish to delay…?” His snakelike eyes darted around the room.

Stephens fielded that one without the slightest hesitation, with the officious concern of the well-meaning but somewhat dim. “Yes, that was rather a bad show all around. I was actually looking for him myself, to make sure he was all right, but no joy. Don’t know where he could have gotten to. Perhaps the poor blighter went straight to the infirmary? No one has either entered or left this barracks since I got here.”

“I… had not considered that possibility,” Lange said. “A good suggestion. I will go there myself to see if he is in any difficulties. Bauer is a disgrace to his uniform; that is not the way we do things here at Stalag 13.”

_I’ll just bet it’s not._ “I never doubted that for a moment,” Stephens reassured him. “As for Mr. Bauer, well, I do understand that the strain of his position is quite telling, and that the constant vigilance can take a real toll on a chap, but I was gratified to see that you didn’t stand for his abuse of power, and I know my superiors will be glad to hear it, too.” Stephens shook his head in prissy disappointment. “Some of the facilities we’ve visited… well. I’m not really at liberty to discuss details, but I can assure you that your camp is certainly not of the ordinary caliber. Not in the least. And I fully intend on reporting as much.”

The prisoners all heard what the Red Cross representative was truly saying, Stephens was sure of it. Oddly enough, the fat German guard seemed to hear it, too, and his expression as he scanned the prisoners, (including, emphatically, a corporal who was doing an admirable impersonation of a wax effigy,) was concerned, almost tender. The SS man was just this side of a sneer, but then he usually was. Lange, it seemed, was taking it all at face value. And thank heaven for that.

“So anyway, Kommandant, if you were going to look for the injured fellow, I’d hate to keep you. I know how seriously you take your responsibilities to your men,” Stephens finished, uncomfortably aware that he was slathering it on a bit thickly, but wanting the Nazi gone.

“Ja. Ja… I must see that he has not been hurt,” said Lange, still looking daggers at the prisoners, but in a distracted way that said clearly that he had bigger fish to fry. He turned on his heel and strode away, accompanied by the SS officer. The camp guard hesitated a moment, shook his head reproachfully at Newkirk, with the barest hint of a twinkle in his eyes, then hurried after his Kommandant.

Three of the men sat limply down, relief written clearly on their faces. Newkirk stayed standing a moment longer, pupils dilated with shock, dragging in a ragged breath as he tried to process what had just happened. As the life began to flow back into his face, he shot Stephens a practiced smile. “Thank you, sir. Wasn’t exactly looking forward to another cooler stretch.”

“Cooler?” Nothing by that name had featured on his tour of the camp facilities.

“Solitary,” Richmond translated. “And the cooler was a best-case scenario,” he finished, under his breath. He’d genuinely expected to see the man dragged out and shot.

Newkirk just shrugged, unfazed, or at least, a reasonable facsimile thereof. He’d expected it, too. “So, getting back to business, gents…?”

Stephens nodded. “I’ll be in touch,” he said. “For now, though, it will look very suspicious if I hang about here for too much longer. Sergeant, if you could help me find my way back? I believe my associate was supposed to be inspecting the recreation hall.”

“It will be pristine,” Forrest said, getting to his feet. “We’re never permitted to use it. But right this way, sir. I think I remember where it is.”

As they left the barracks, Stephens glanced over at the other man. “Your men are amazing,” he said. “That performance you all put on for us this morning... it was incredible. Simply incredible. I… if it’s not too personal, Sergeant. How do you fellows _manage_? I’d go mad.”

Forrest straightened his jacket. “We don’t. We’re not managing, sir. We’re dying like flies. And we _do_ go mad. You’ve seen our Corporal Newkirk in action. Would you honestly call that man sane?”

Stephens winced. “I see.”

“He’s far from the only wire-happy fellow in camp. One of the more… colorful, possibly, but there are actually quite a few who are a great deal worse off, if in a less dramatic way. The role he was playing earlier? Very much drawn from real life. And the chronic malnutrition does no one any favors.”

“I’ll make some noise about that, never fear. I assume you chaps aren’t receiving the food parcels to which you’re entitled.”

“No. However, I have no doubt that the Germans are most appreciative.”

“Oh, quite. Damned thieves,” Stephens said sourly. “And yet, you fellows are managing to survive. I take off my hat to you all, I really do. I wish I knew how you do it.”

“I wish I knew myself. I don’t either, not really,” Forrest said. “I’m no psychologist. I suppose… we can’t save ourselves, sir. None of us can. That’s… that’s just something we all have to learn, our first few months. Usually the hard way, you understand? We can’t save ourselves. So we do our damnedest to save one another. If there’s a secret to surviving this place, it’s that.”

Through the open window wafted irritated voices. “…Bloody hell, Louie, leave off! It was nothing but a couple of flipping love taps, and I’m fine, see? No bruises, no breaks, no blood. So would you stop being such a ruddy old woman?”

“I will stop being an old woman when you stop being a stupid jackass! _Ah, ciel!_ What am I saying? You are always being a stupid jackass—”

Stephens shook his head. “I imagine that fellow does require a fair bit of saving.”

“On the rare occasions he lets us,” Forrest said heavily. “I’ll grant you, Corporal LeBeau does his best. But there’s not much I’ve been able to do for Newkirk but let him dash himself against brick walls as hard as he likes, and then attempt to pick up the pieces afterwards. I tried, my first few months. After all, I’m barracks chief, by virtue of a set of stripes I’d had for all of five weeks before ending up in here; it was my _job_ to try. He was already six months in and madder than a March hare, but he _is_ one of ours, and one can’t help liking the fellow. Most of what you saw this morning was his doing.”

“So I gathered,” Stephens said. “Even the guard seemed concerned for him.”

He smiled, not sorry to change the subject. “Oh, yes; Sergeant Schultz. Good man, that one. Granted, he doesn’t quite seem to grasp the concept of enemy prisoners… or of war in general, come to that. But a good sort. Um. Sir…?”

“Yes, Sergeant?”

Suddenly Forrest looked as young as he truly was. “I do appreciate you giving the men some hope, sir. Don’t think otherwise. But… do you truly think you can do anything for us? I mean… really?”

Stephens met his eyes. “I do, Sergeant. I don’t know how much. I don’t know how fast. We have some leverage; we have some methods of influencing the Germans that are, shall we say, less than orthodox. But we can’t simply issue orders or wave a wand. We need you lads to hold on a bit longer. For now, save each other as you’ve been doing; we’ll save you all as soon as we can.”

Forrest smiled sadly. “I do hope so, sir. I really do hope so.”

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

After the official end of the tour, the Red Cross men were escorted back to town and lodged in the local inn for the night. The two of them sat in the mediocre hotel restaurant that evening, toying with leathery sauerbraten and trying not to wonder what the prisoners were eating that night.

_If_ they were eating that night.

“I don’t know if I’m cut out for this,” Rowland said, after a while. “I… I don’t much like feeling this helpless.”

“No one does,” Stephens said. “Come to that, I can’t imagine the boys we saw today much like _being_ helpless, either.”

“None of the camps we’ve inspected have been good,” Rowland said softly. “But this one…”

“I know,” Stephens said, ripping a piece of pumpernickel into quarters. “That Kommandant was round the twist. We’re going to have to tread very carefully, so as not to provoke him into retaliating against the men. With any luck we’ll be able to get them some help by the end of the year.”

“Do you think that will be soon enough?” Rowland asked.

“…No.” Stephens examined the bit of bread in his hand from every angle, and finally put it down. Getting heavily to his feet, he crumpled his napkin and threw it on the table. “Look, Rowland, it’s been a long, dreadful day and we’re both done in. I’m heading back to my room; I’ll see you in the morning, all right?”

The younger man nodded, his eyes firmly fixed upon his plate. Stephens suppressed a sigh, and left the room. He’d have liked to have been able to reassure the younger man, to tell him some bright, cheery fairy tale to the effect that they, as representatives of the Red Cross, dispensers of mercy and succor to the unfortunate, would be able to personally guarantee the safety of the downtrodden young men of the stalag. He’d have liked to have been able to reassure the prisoners of the same thing. He’d have liked to have been able to reassure himself.

_We can’t save ourselves. So we do our damnedest to save one another._ The words echoed in his head like a bugle call. He reached his room, peeled off his jacket, loosened his tie, and sat down at the small desk to compose a report that his superiors would never see.

Not the ones at the Red Cross, at any rate.

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

The general’s adjutant opened the letter, and, almost immediately, dismissed it from his mind. It wasn’t the sort of official correspondence that he needed to do anything about, that was for certain. The censors hadn’t done much to it, at least partially because there was nothing in it that looked the least bit suspicious… or, for that matter, even remotely interesting. His aged auntie was deeply concerned for her dear nephew’s health now that the weather was getting cold, and apparently did not trust military-issue winter clothing to ward off the chill, because, as she informed him, she had knitted him several pairs of socks and a woolly jumper that she was sending under separate cover. She spent some three paragraphs telling him that she was considering taking a walk round the park if the weather was fine that afternoon. She went on to report that her little pug had growled at the mailman, but she was certain that it wasn’t the poor puppy’s fault; the mailman was a tetchy sort, and had probably kicked him when she wasn’t looking. And so on, and so forth, for two interminable pages of mind-numbingly petty details, written small.

Rolling his eyes, the adjutant stuck the letter back in its envelope and put it with the rest of the general’s mail. The old dear meant well, he was sure, and perhaps it would give the General a smile or two. God knew there was little enough else to smile about these days.

The General didn’t smile, as it happened. He scanned the letter once, twice, effortlessly picking out the coded phrases. _Found possible location for proposed operation. Potential candidates for reassignment to intelligence branch already in place. Conditions bad; abuse concealed but present. Assistance required. Additional information to follow. Do not contact; agent currently under surveillance._

He nodded once, decisively. It was crazy… possibly even crazy enough to work. And, he thought, with a very small twinge at the utter callousness of it all, if it did not, in fact, work, the Allied forces would lose nothing that was not already in German hands and at German mercy. Frankly, with regards to fighting a war, the difference between a man’s capture and his death was, in many ways, essentially academic to everyone except the man in question. This could change that. 

As soon as Stephens was in a position where they could communicate more directly, they could get down to the serious business of trying to put the whole thing together. Locations were all very well, but personnel was going to be the far greater headache. Who could command a wildcat operation like the one they had proposed? They needed just the right mix of skills and personalities in the team, and just the right combination of genius and lunacy in the CO. Could they come up with a reason to recall Stephens from the blasted Red Cross tour? This was no time to be playing the visiting fireman; things could change at a moment’s notice.

That was on November 30th, 1941. Within a week, _everything_ had changed.

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

Author’s note: The attack on Pearl Harbor, needless to say, occurred on December the seventh. So, those of you who were wondering if the American members of the core team were ever going to show up... they’re on their way. We know from canon that Hogan had worked with the RAF, so he might have already been on their short list to command the operation, but the other fellows will just have to trickle in as the fortunes of war allow.


	12. Chapter 12

He’d expected to be abused, and he was; the Germans called him names he didn’t need to translate to understand, and knocked him around just enough to make it unmistakably clear that he was very much in their power. No more and no less than any other prisoner in the Dulag, which was actually somewhat comforting, in a bitter sort of way, but it was more than enough. It was humiliating—intended to be humiliating—and gritting his teeth and enduring it all with some measure of dignity took every ounce of self-control he’d ever learned.

Eventually, once the Krauts had evidently decided that they weren’t going to get anything out of him and that there was no sense in continuing to try, he was loaded onto a truck with a handful of other battered, grim-faced prisoners, all headed… somewhere; he didn’t want to think too hard about where that might be, or how much worse it could get. He sighed, looked down at his cuffed hands. Probably a lot worse.

He’d expected abuse from the Germans. He’d been right. He’d also expected that the hard-earned stripes on his sleeve would earn him some measure of respect from his fellow soldiers. And when a tow-haired airman shoved him away, half off the narrow bench they were sitting on, calling him names he understood far too well and which needed no translation, Sergeant James Kinchloe realized that he’d been wrong.

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

It was February of 1942. The sun was doing its level best to shine, and the day, to give credit where such was due, was bright, but in terms of warmth, the sunshine was not making much headway against the bone-deep chill or the brisk wind.

Newkirk used a stick to lift a sock from the washtub and flicked it over the clothesline; there was no way he was going to dip his hands in that icy water. He pinned it in place. “Oi, Louie,” he said sourly. “I think I’ve got it. We’re going to let our long johns freeze solid on the line, then use them as props to shore up the tunnel, right?”

LeBeau was using another stick to vigorously stir the clothing in the soapy water. “I thought we could perhaps use the— _what did you call them?_ —the ‘Jeannes longues’ as mannequins. Let them freeze, dress them in our spare uniforms, and stand them up before the barracks at roll call.”

“I like it. The screws can count them as many times as they please, while we stay tucked up inside. And it’s not like my underwear’s got ears, so listening to our beloved Kommandant’s lovely speeches can’t do it much harm.”

“True,” Richmond said, pinning a tee shirt to the line. “As the old saying goes, it’s the liar’s pants that catch fire; not the pants of the poor fellow forced to listen.”

“I would almost be grateful if they did. It would at least be warm,” groused LeBeau.

“Getting back to the subject of tunnels,” Richmond said. “We’re not going to get much further with the one we have unless we can find more material to brace the roof, and no, Newkirk, our underwear won’t do. It’s in a bad way. We’re scanting the props anyway; it’s going to go from ‘not especially safe’ to ‘actively dangerous’ if we stretch them any further than we already are.”

Newkirk grimaced. “Last thing we need’s another cave-in,” he agreed. “For that matter, another cave-in could be the last thing we _get_. But every scrap of wood we’ve been able to scrounge has been going straight into the stoves. I try to tell the lads that they have to give up their firewood to brace a tunnel half of them think is a fool’s errand to begin with, they’ll just laugh in my face. Or punch it.”

LeBeau pretended to think about it. “A risk I, for one, am entirely willing to take, eh, Richmond?”

“You’re all heart, mate. All heart.” Newkirk looked up at the familiar rumble of a German truck approaching the gate. “Allo, allo, allo; looks like we’ve got company.”

Abandoning the laundry, the three of them went for a closer look, standing casually in the lee of Barracks Six, which was closest to the gate.

“Perhaps the war’s over, and they’re here to surrender,” Richmond said, with no particular hope. “The Yanks are in it now, after all.”

“Looks like the Yanks are in _here_ , now,” said Newkirk, as the Germans began offloading men in olive drab uniforms. “New lodgers, God help them.”

All three of them were silent for a moment, each remembering their own welcome to the camp. Richmond rallied first. “Well, I’ll go find Forrest and the other barracks chiefs and let them know what’s happening. They’re the only Yanks in camp, so Lange will probably split them up so they can’t spend too much time with one another.”

“Probably won’t be the only Yanks for long,” Newkirk said quietly. Unconsciously, he wound his hands together, rubbing his wrists as if he could still feel the shackles chafing his skin. Which, as a matter of fact, he could. “Poor sods. And poor _us_. Until we can sort out which of them are all right and which are rats, there’s no tunneling, no black marketing, no cooking in the barracks.”

“And since they are from America, there is not likely to be anyone here who can vouch for any of them,” LeBeau finished. “This will be a problem.”

“Almost as if the Krauts aren’t arranging things for our convenience,” Richmond said. “For shame.”

“I’m going to write a letter to the Times, I am,” Newkirk said. “Right; you go find Forrest and give him the joyful news; I’m going to take a stroll to the Kommandantur and prop up the wall beneath the window. Maybe I’ll hear something worth my while.”

“Don’t… Be careful,” Richmond said, acceding to the inevitable.

“Don’t be careful?” He grinned.

“Don’t get caught!”

“Cooler might be the warmest spot in camp right about now, but I’ll try my best, mum,” Newkirk said over his shoulder, starting across the compound in a studiedly casual amble.

Ten minutes later, he was regretting the impulse that had sent him over to eavesdrop; he had heard nothing more valuable than one of Lange’s stock speeches about the impossibility of escape and the innate superiority of Germans and the inevitability of an imminent Allied defeat and the complete lack of mercy they could expect if any of the camp rules were broken or bent by so much as an inch, blah blah blah, Heil Hitler, and so forth. He’d heard it so often that he could have delivered it himself. And had, albeit with some creative variations for humorous effect.

Two sergeants, a corporal, and two airmen, if he was reading the rank insignia correctly. They’d been brought in as a group, and the guard began herding them out the door the same way; none were left behind for ‘additional interrogation.’ Not yet, at least. They’d all need to keep a close watch on their new roommates for a while, but that went without saying.

One of the sergeants was a stocky, dark-haired fellow with what looked like medical insignia on his fatigues. Newkirk spent a second hoping that, if any of the new prisoners did in fact turn out to be dirty, it wouldn’t be _that_ one. They needed a medic.

As Schultz tucked his clipboard under his arm, Newkirk sidled up to the group. “Allo, gents,” he said cheerfully. “Welcome to the very finest POW camp you could ever hope to escape from.”

“Newkirk, this is no time for jokes,” Schultz said as a few of the men half-smiled. “Do not listen to him, prisoners. There is no escaping Stalag 13.”

“Quite right, Schultzie,” Newkirk said. “You’ll never catch me saying otherwise. Those gaping holes we keep finding in the barbed wire are probably just termite damage. Vicious things, German termites. Eat right through steel. That’s why the wings of their planes fall off so easy.”

One or two of the men stifled chuckles at that. “Newkirk! Do not say such things,” Schultz scolded. “You are setting a very bad example.”

“Who, me? Why, Sergeant, I have nothing but the highest respect for you Jerries and your creepy-crawlies,” he said. “Goose-stepping with six legs apiece is a sight to behold, and the way they salute with their little antennas brings a tear to my eye.” He held his hands to his head like antennae, let one droop and snapped the other to attention. In a squeaky voice and a German accent, he chirped out, “Heil Hitler!”

Now all the men were doing their best not to laugh, and not succeeding very well. Schultz, who could sense his control of the situation slipping further and further away, took refuge in bluster. “Ah, Newkirk, you go too far! Always you go too far, and one day I will have to report you! You must not do things like that, especially not in front of the new prisoners!”

“Like what? Salute? Say that I respect you? You got it, Schultzie,” Newkirk said readily. “I don’t respect you buggering goons one bit. Happy now? Should I go tell the Kommandant that’s what you told me to say?”

“Oooh, Newkirk,” Schultz groaned. “You will get _me_ in trouble if you say things like that. Please, please do not talk that way… especially not to the Kommandant!”

“Yeah. That’s the main difference between the Russian Front and the cooler, innit? One of them you’ve got half a chance at coming back out alive. You’ve got a deal, Schultzie. I won’t tell Lange.”

“Thank you, Newkirk,” Schultz said, vaguely aware that, somehow, the conversation had gone wrong… again… but figuring out precisely how would take more energy than he wanted to spare. “Newkirk, Sergeant—” Another peek at the clipboard. “Sergeant Kinchloe is in Barracks Two with you and your friends. Show him to his new home, ja?”

“Ja, ja. Home sweet home, be it ever so humble. And it is ever so humble, that’s for sure. Which one of you blokes is Sergeant Kinchloe, then?”

“I am,” said the one who wasn’t a medic. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and dark-skinned; he’d been one of the first to smile at Newkirk’s antics, and the smile went all the way up to his eyes, which told him that at least the American hadn’t had his spirit entirely broken. Good sign. He was watching Newkirk very carefully, though, looking as wary of the Englishman as he had of the Krauts. Not such a good sign.

“Right-o,” Newkirk said and smiled. “Corporal Peter Newkirk, Esquire, at your service, Sergeant. If you’ll just follow me this way, I’ll show you to your room. Barracks Two is one of our better pigsties; lovely view of the delousing shed, and hot and cold running water laid on. Well, almost; only when it’s raining and it’s only ever cold, but the sound of the drip from the ceiling to the buckets is marvelously soothing.”

“Sounds delightful,” Kinchloe said, playing along. “Is there maid service?”

“What kind of tupenny-hapenny outfit do you think we’re running? Of course there is. Never seen her yet, but I’m assured that she’ll be in to do up the place any decade now.”

“I suppose she leaves mints on the pillow as well?”

“Ah, afraid you’ve got me there, lad. No pillows to leave the mints on. But the mattresses are stuffed with only the finest dirty straw Germany’s got to offer.”

Kinchloe stiffened. As a term of address, ‘lad’ was far too close to ‘boy’ for his tastes, and he wasn’t in much of a mood to be talked down to— yet again— by a man he outranked. “I see,” he said coldly. “Too bad.”

Newkirk, taken slightly aback by his shift in tone, shrugged and changed his tack. “Anyhow, it’s no worse than any of the other hellholes in camp, which isn’t exactly saying all that much, but there it is. Sleeping arrangements are always something of a headache, but Anderson transferred over to Barracks Six last week, so we’ve got to do some rearranging anyhow. I think we can manage it so you won’t have to sleep on the floor.”

Kinchloe wondered, his ears getting hot, if he was supposed to be grateful for the concession. He wasn’t. “Okay,” he said shortly, and stuffed his hands into his pockets where no one would see if they curled into fists.

“And… oh, damn it. Sorry, mate, but can I give you a bit of a warning for your own good?”

“Sure,” Kinchloe said. “What did you want to tell me?”

“Well, some of the kriegies here in camp… some of them don’t have any warm feelings about you fellows. And right now, you’re the only one of your lot in the barracks. Now I don’t doubt that there’ll be more on the way, and eventually you might be able to transfer to be with your own if you’d rather, but you might want to tread a bit carefully at first, see?”

It rasped on his nerves like sandpaper. _You fellows? Be with your own?_ One punch. All he needed was one punch to relieve his feelings. The skinny little twerp would never know what hit him, and surely he didn’t need to be able to see out of _both_ eyes. Kinchloe forced his hand to relax. “I see,” he said evenly.

“Yeah. Sorry to be the one to say it, but always best to be prepared, right? I mean, you’d think that they’d realize that the poor enlisted sods who end up in here weren’t the ones making the decision to hang around twiddling their thumbs while Europe took a pounding, but a lot of folks are just bloody stupid. There’s some resentment there.”

“I unders—wait, what? They resent who?”

Newkirk looked at him oddly. “Yanks. You do have to admit that your lot took your sweet time deciding that Hitler needed a bit of a seeing-to. There are a few lads hereabouts that took it a bit personally. But you just stick close to me and my mates for a while; we’ll see you right until they get their heads in order.”

“Americans? You were talking about Americans? Saying that I’m the only American in the barracks? That some people here resent _Americans? That’s_ what you meant by that?”

Now Newkirk just looked confused. “You _are_ a Yank, aren’t you? Between the uniform and the accent I’d assumed as much…?”

Kinchloe felt a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. Americans. Not black Americans. He could live with that. “Yes, I’m American,” he said. “And no, I certainly wasn’t consulted on military strategy.”

“Didn’t think so. Don’t worry; they’ll settle soon enough. And, I’m very sorry to say, there will probably be a lot more of your lot rolling through the gates before the war’s over; you lads just had the rotten luck to be the first, which is why they split you up. Well, that and the lack of space. We’re jammed in here like sardines in a tin, and if Anderson hadn’t transferred when he did, someone likely _would_ have ended up back on the floor.” He snorted. “Probably me. Your mates might, too.”

“They’re no ‘mates’ of mine,” Kinchloe said. “I never saw any of them in my life before they dumped us on that truck.”

“Well, like I said. If you’d like, you’re more than welcome to fall in with my set; they’re all good blokes. My mate LeBeau’s a Frenchie. Can’t miss him; red beret, about so high, and a temper like bloody Mount Vesuvius. His English is pretty good by this time. Rest of us in Two are all RAF.”

“I speak French,” Kinchloe said.

“That so? Louie will be glad of it. He’s taught me the words, right enough, but he says that even in English, my accent makes his ears bleed, and listening to me try to talk French is a violation of the Geneva Convention.”

Kinchloe laughed. “Well, I must say, old chap,” he drawled in faux-Mayfair tones. “Your accent is not exactly BBC standard, what?”

“Ah, but if it was, that would be one less thing for the dear fellow to fuss about, and we can’t have that, now can we, old man?” Newkirk shot back in the same tones. “He does so enjoy taking potshots at everything that isn’t French, and preferably Parisian.”

“I’ll remember that,” Kinchloe said.

“Spend five minutes with him and you won’t be able to forget it,” Newkirk said, returning to his own voice. “I can’t really give you much good news about winding up in this place. Food’s bad and there’s not much of it, we’re so overcrowded that even the lice are complaining, our medical system consists of prayer, it’s bloody cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey ten months out of the year, and most of the Krauts are just itching for a chance to use those rifles of theirs. I’m sorry you’re here, Sergeant, and that’s a fact.”

“Thanks,” he said. “Thanks for the warning, and thanks for the sympathy, I guess. I… well, never mind the ‘Sergeant’ stuff. Call me Kinch.”

Newkirk nodded. “Cheers, Kinch,” he said, opening the door to the barracks. Catching his foot on the threshold as they entered, he stumbled into Kinchloe, who automatically steadied him. “Oops. Clumsy of me. Sorry about that, mate.”

Forrest glanced at Newkirk, who nodded fractionally. _Clean._

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

Author’s note: And then there were three. Four if you count a cameo appearance by a certain medic who seems to have become a far more important character in fanon than he ever was on screen.


	13. Chapter 13

Two weeks later, Kinch was down in the tunnel with the rest of them, shifting dirt and chatting with the others as though he’d been in camp for a year rather than a fortnight. He’d been accepted as one of them, and let in on their less-than-regulation activities, in exceptionally short order; being genuinely likable had probably helped with that. Richmond had said, with a cheerful shrug, that the American might yet turn out to be a German spy, and as such, might get all of them shot, but at least they would have had a few weeks or months of pleasant conversations beforehand, which was not to be sneezed at. In a stalag, you learned to take what you could get.

The sleeping arrangements had been hammered out with no more than the usual amount of bargaining, complaining, and insult:

‘Oh, no; you’re not sticking me back with MacDonald; the tosser talks in his sleep! And he doesn’t even say anything interesting!’

‘Is that so? Well, I didn’t like to say anything, but your morning breath is eating holes in the blanket. Someone swap with me! Anyone!’

‘Far as I’m concerned, Newkirk’s yours if you want him.’

‘…I’ll stick with the morning breath, thanks anyhow.’

‘Right, who wants Richmond? Fair warning—he’s a cuddler.’

‘Count yourself lucky; at least it’s warm that way. Everett steals the covers.’

‘All right; Browning, you snore, and Hawkins, you grind your teeth. You two _deserve_ each other.’

…And so on, and so forth. It did all work out eventually, and nobody ended up on the floor, although, for a while, there was some serious consideration as to the feasibility of weaving hammocks as an alternative to tripling up, and some even more serious consideration given to making certain individuals sleep outside. All just a part of the rich pageant that was life in Stalag 13.

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

 _For you, the war is over._ The words ran through his head like snake venom in a vein; just as insidious, just as deadly. The barbed wire around the Oflag might as well have been wrapped clear around his throat, and half the time he felt as though it was. _For you, the war is over._ It was an officer’s duty to escape and return to his own forces, and he had every intention of doing just that the moment he had half a chance, but even without that little bit of legal justification, even if the blasted rulebook had said it was an officer’s duty to acquiesce, fold his hands and politely wait for the war to end on its own, he’d still have been plotting escapes. The goddamned Krauts weren’t going to keep _him_ down, no sir, they most certainly would not. _For you, the war is over._

Two words. _Like Hell!_ Colonel Robert E. Hogan, pilot, squadron commander, strategist, daredevil, ladies’ man, lateral thinker, and— for the moment— POW, wasn’t having any of that. He’d get himself out of this stinking pit, get back home, get back in the air, and get back to blasting Nazis out of the sky. He _would._ He had to. His war was _not_ over, and any Kraut who wanted to tell him otherwise could stick it where the sun never shone. Crosswise.

He glared at the fence one last time, and turned away. There really weren’t any weak places that he could see, no spots where cutting the wire could go unnoticed. The searchlights were too well spaced, the guard towers too well manned. Tunneling had run into an obstacle; namely solid rock, so that was temporarily on hold while they tried to reroute. And trying to climb the fence would be suicide. So, if you couldn’t go over, and you couldn’t go under, and you couldn’t go through…

He’d get out. _He’d get out_. One way or another, he’d get out. They couldn’t hold him forever. Not him.

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

It was so dark. And so close. The air was thick with dust, every part of him that could possibly hurt was hurting, and so was every part that _couldn’t_ , just for good measure. What had happened? Where was he?

LeBeau groaned, sliding back into consciousness and not at all certain that he wanted to. _“What the hell happened? What’s going on?”_

Newkirk coughed out a lungful of dirt. “I think… ooh, bloody hell. I think the flipping tunnel caved in,” he said. “Richmond said we’d been scanting the props. Looks like he was right.”

“Caved in…? We are trapped?” LeBeau gasped for breath. _”Buried alive? Oh, my God. We’re going to die. We’re going to die!”_

“LeBeau. Louie!” Newkirk couldn’t really move; about the best he could do was to reach out and grab LeBeau’s ankle. “Oi! Louie. Budge up. Look at me. Look _only_ at me, you hear? Breathe, mate. Breathe.”

“ _Trapped. We’re trapped_ …” LeBeau was in no shape to listen to anything but his own pounding heart and the hiss of shifting dirt. He’d started to hyperventilate. “ _My God. Oh, dear God in heaven, help me._ ”

“Sorry, mate, He’s busy. Told me to tell you to relax, trust your Uncle Peter, and you’ll be out of here in two shakes, all right? Louie, you listening?” He switched to French. In better circumstances, LeBeau might have noticed that his accent had miraculously improved. “ _Come closer. Over here. With me. Come here._ ”

His own language reached him where English could not. Automatically, LeBeau obeyed, slithering closer to Newkirk. As soon as he was close enough, Newkirk grabbed his shoulders and held him steady. “That’s right. _That’s right. Be calm, Louis. Be calm now. Everything will be fine.”_

As LeBeau’s breathing gradually steadied, he started noticing a bit more of his surroundings. “ _Pierre? Are you all right?_ ”

Newkirk was lying on his stomach, buried from the waist down. “Yeah. I mean, _yes, I’m fine,_ ” he said soothingly, well aware that he was lying. His head was pounding like a full ack-ack battery and his hair was sticky with blood; he assumed that he must have been clipped by a falling rock. Worse, he couldn’t feel his legs, and there was simply no way that was a good sign. “Bit of digging to do over, is all. The lads will have us out as soon as they can; all we’ve got to do is stay calm till they get here. _We can be calm, can’t we, Louis? We can wait.”_

 _“You are buried! I will get you out._ ”

“ _No!_ ” Newkirk caught himself, modulated his voice back to ‘soothing’. “ _Not yet, Louis_.”

“ _Are you crazy? Why not?_ ”

_A number of reasons flashed through Newkirk’s mind. Because I don’t know how much air we’ve got in here, and the harder you work the faster we’ll use it up. Because I don’t know how stable the roof is. Because I don’t know if there’s anything propping it up besides me. Because I’m afraid that my back is broken and I want to put off finding out that I’m right for as long as I can._

What he said aloud was merely, “ _The others will be here for us soon; they’ll have_ shovels and whatnot. _Don’t tire yourself out_ trying to dig with your bare hands.”

“I am not tired. Let me help, _mon pote_. You cannot stay as you are. You are buried. You cannot stay buried. You… you… _you cannot be buried. We are not dead. Only the dead are buried. You must not stay buried!_ ”

“Louie. Stop it, mate. Louie!” Newkirk grabbed his friend’s shoulders again, shook him. “Louie, talk to me. I need you to tell me… tell me how you make those fancy French foods, all right? Say I wanted to make that potato soup of yours. How would I go about cooking that?”

“You would never want to,” LeBeau said automatically. “You would only cook something dreadful; boiled mutton or—what did you call it, Frog in the Well?”

“That’s ‘Toad in the Hole,’ and, for your information, it’s ruddy delicious. Say I did want to cook some of your French grub, though. That potato soup, now. What’s the first step?”

“Well, you would begin by peeling the potatoes, of course,” LeBeau began. His breathing steadied as he went through the entire recipe, and somehow vichyssoise led naturally to quiche Lorraine and crepes Suzette.

(‘Blimey, LeBeau, do you Frenchies ever eat anything that isn’t named after a bird?’

‘Why should we? Why should **anyone**?’

‘… All right, mate; you’ve got a point there.’)

By the time the diggers broke through, LeBeau was only semi-conscious. Whether that was due to the claustrophobia or the fact that the air was getting very thin was debatable; both played a part.

“LeBeau! Are you all right? Where’s—oh, dear God. Newkirk? Are you hurt?”

“Nothing to speak of, Forrest,” he said. “Get LeBeau out of here, will you?”

Forrest gave him a troubled look, then nodded. “All right,” he said. “Hang in there a bit longer. Kinch went to get more braces. We’ll have you out in no time.”

“Yeah. Sure. Be careful,” he said, and watched in silence as Forrest all but dragged LeBeau out of the semi-cleared tunnel.

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

The Red Cross representative had toured the entire Oflag, making noncommittal but vaguely encouraging noises all the way, and had stopped for brief private discussions with as many of the men as he could. Hogan watched him with a jaundiced expression as he made his fussy way across the camp. He had no intention of trying to talk with the man; what was there to say, really? The camp was ever so slightly on the sunny side of the Geneva Convention, so the Red Cross could cluck their tongues and shake their heads as much as they liked; the Germans were in the clear. There was nothing the Protecting Powers could do for them, and a conversation that would boil down to ‘Stiff upper lip, my good man; the war can’t last forever,’ was a conversation he could very much do without.

Unfortunately for him, the representative didn’t seem to feel the same. He apparently wanted to have heart-to-heart chats with every last man in camp—Heaven forfend he miss a single detail—and he was making a beeline for Hogan, who was standing alone, leaning up against the water tower.

“Good day, sir,” he said. “My name is Gerald Stephens.”

“Colonel Robert Hogan,” he said shortly. “You here to deliver my dry cleaning?”

Stephens blinked, then the corner of his mouth twitched. “Well, Colonel, I’m glad you’ve been able to keep your sense of humor in working condition.”

“You know how it is in a POW camp; just a laugh a minute,” Hogan drawled.

“I can just imagine,” Stephens said. His eyes flicked left, right; no one was near. “Colonel Hogan,” he said quietly. “I am not here solely as a representative of the Red Cross, and I came specifically to speak with you. Allied High Command has a… somewhat unorthodox proposition for you.”

Hogan frowned. “If it involves getting me out of here, I don’t care how unorthodox it is.”

Stephens shook his head. “Out of this Oflag, yes. Out of German custody, no. If you agree, you will be transferred to a different camp for the duration.” He sounded apologetic. “An enlisted men’s camp.”

“Are you out of your… What’s your game, Stephens? Why in hell would I want that? What good would that do me?”

“This camp is too isolated; the LuftStalag we’ve selected is more conveniently placed for what High Command has in mind.”

“The first rule of real estate; location, location, location. Look, Stephens, cut to the chase, will you? And make it interesting. Why do you want me in with the other ranks?”

Stephens cleared his throat. “Intelligence,” he said. “Sabotage. Espionage. Are you interested yet?”

“…Keep talking.”

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

His legs were starting to hurt very badly, which, he reminded himself sternly, was good news, at least so far as his apparently- _not_ -broken back was concerned. It was always important to look on the bright side of things. This way, when the rest of the tunnel gave up the ghost and he suffocated under a ton of dirt, he could die writhing in pain rather than paralyzed and numb. The sour joke actually wrung a wry chuckle out of him as he tried, once more, to wriggle free, but the first hint of disturbance brought on an ominous shower of dust from the roof, and it was no longer funny.

Eventually, Kinch appeared in the tunnel; he had a canteen slung around his neck and an entrenching tool in his belt. “Hey, Newkirk,” he said easily. “Nice day for a tunnel collapse, eh?” He passed over the canteen.

Newkirk unscrewed the top, gulped down a mouthful of stale, tepid water, flavored with the dust coating the inside of his mouth and throat. It was perhaps the most glorious thing he’d ever tasted. “Cheers, Kinch,” he said when he could speak again, and handed it back.

“Any time. Well, now that we’ve gotten the pleasantries out of the way, let’s get down to business. I’ll have you out of there before you know it.”

“No. Give me the shovel and I’ll do it myself; you get back out with the others where it’s safe.”

“Come on, Newkirk. It’ll go a lot faster if I do it.”

“Too right, it will go fast. The whole bloody roof’s about to go, and probably take the barracks floor with it. This pile of dirt could well be the only thing keeping it up.”

Kinch squinted at the tunnel walls. “You don’t know that for sure.”

“Mate, if any of us knew the first bloody damned thing about how to dig tunnels for sure, I wouldn’t be _in_ this mess, now would I?” Newkirk’s voice had scaled up a half-step and his accent had thickened; the stress was becoming more and more noticeable. “I’m not risking you nor any of the other lads on finding out exactly how rotten a job we did with this one. Give me the flipping shovel and get out!”

“Not a chance, pal,” Kinch said. “Look, we’ve dismantled most of a bunk for the lumber, and we’ve put in new props wherever we could find a place to hammer them in. Even if you’re right about that dirt pile and this section does start to go, I’m pretty sure we can get to safer ground in time.” He shrugged. “Anyway, I’m not leaving you here. So, _Corporal,_ let’s get started, okay?”

Of all the times to pull rank. He snorted. “You’re ‘round the bend, _Sergeant_ , did you know that?”

“And up the creek. Here goes nothing…”

“Kinch. No. Please don’t make me the reason you get yourself killed. Please, mate. Don’t do that to me.”

Kinch said nothing for a moment. Then, his lips firming, he dug the shovel into the mound of dirt and tossed the first scoopful aside. “I could say the same thing to you, Newkirk. And so would LeBeau,” he said. The shovel bit into the earth again; the ceiling released another shower of dust in apparent protest. He ignored it. “Or any of the others. It works both ways, or it doesn’t work at all.”

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

“Anyhow, General, he seemed quite enthusiastic once I’d explained the general outline of what we had in mind. So we’d best get hold of our Teutonic friend and have him start arranging the transfer. Soonest begun, soonest done.”

“You’re that certain he’s the right man for the job, then? You only spoke with the Colonel for, what, twenty minutes?”

“I spoke with him for twenty minutes, after spending twenty days rummaging through his service records, psych reports, eyewitness accounts, old girlfriends, and grammar school report cards. No, General, we’ve found our Goldilocks; I’ve absolutely no doubt about that.”

“Goldilocks?”

“Sorry, sir; just my little joke. As we were going through all those endless lists of candidates, I would think to myself, ‘This one is too rigid; this one is too foolhardy… And this one is _juuuuust_ right.’ Goldilocks.”

The general laughed. “Fair enough… and I think we’ve found our code name. Well done, Nimrod.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Stephens, and smiled. “I really am quite excited to see how this all turns out.”

“So am I,” the general said. “So am I.”


	14. Chapter 14

Fifteen tense minutes and a partial secondary collapse later, two spent, choking figures scrambled out of the tunnel. A dozen men, all talking at once, bustled around, helping the two of them to a seat, bringing more drinking water, brushing the dirt from their jackets, and generally making nuisances of themselves in the process of trying to be helpful.

“I’m okay,” Kinch insisted for the third time. “Really, guys; I’m _fine_. Go fuss over Newkirk; he’s the one who had the worst of it.”

“Better yet. Leave Newkirk the hell alone and let him catch his breath in peace,” Newkirk rasped. “We’re all right. But we’ve lost about twenty feet of the tunnel, I’d say, and good riddance. That thing is a bleeding deathtrap.”

Foxton, one of the more dedicated, if less skillful, tunnellers, bristled. “Hey! Would you rather stay here for the rest of the war?”

Newkirk didn’t miss a beat. “So what are you lot hanging around goldbricking for? Let’s get back to work, eh?”

“That’s more like it,” Richmond said with a grin. “Did you guys leave the shovel in there?”

“About ten feet in,” Kinch said. “Seemed safer than trying to hide it here in the barracks, and that first section is braced well enough that it should be all right, even if there are some aftershocks at the far end.”

“Good enough for me,” Forrest said. “We’re all knackered; tomorrow night will be soon enough to start repairing the part that caved in, for my money. How’s LeBeau?”

“He’s all right,” said MacDonald, who had been elected the bunk medic on the entirely inadequate strength of a father who was a veterinarian. “Seems to me like he just breathed in a lot of dirt, and then when the air went bad, it caught up with him. He’s sleeping it off.”

“Okay, good. Come over here; Newkirk’s got a lump on his head the size of a goose egg.”

MacDonald shrugged helplessly as he walked over to Newkirk’s bunk. “What do you expect me to do? I’m really not a doctor, you know—”

“Hey!” Hawkins barked in a strangled voice, cutting him off. “ _Where’s Browning?_ ”

Foxton looked around, his eyes widening. “Was he down—Oh, God! Quick! _Get the shovels!_ ”

Everyone made for the tunnel entrance at once. “Newkirk, sit down; you’re hurt and you’ll only slow the rest of us,” Forrest ordered. “Hawkins, Stewart; you two start off with the shovels. McGuire and I will spell you after ten minutes. Everyone else, bucket brigade with the dirt and I don’t give a damn where you have to pile the stuff. We’ll worry about hiding it _after_ he’s safe. MacDonald, stay to the rear and be ready for us to bring him out. I know you’re not a doctor, but you’re all we’ve got. Newkirk, I said _sit the hell down_! Now move!”

They did.

Browning had been assisting with the rescue mission, and had been caught in that secondary collapse, providentially just where one of the sparse props had been located. So he wasn’t actually buried, just sealed inside what amounted to a tiny cavern. That was the good news. The bad news was that he had apparently taken a substantial knock to the head and was out cold, with a gash on his forehead that was almost certainly going to scar if he lived long enough for that to be a consideration, a pool of vomit beneath his cheek, and a bluish tint to his lips. They carried him to the barracks as carefully as they could.

Hawkins looked at his friend, naked anguish on his face. “He’s hurt. He needs a real doctor,” he said numbly. “He needs more help than we can give him here.”

Forrest bit his lip, thinking hard. “I think... The Yank who came in with you, Kinch; he was a medic, wasn’t he?”

Kinch nodded. “Yes. A Sergeant… Wilson, I think? I don’t know anything more about him than that.”

“We’ll have to risk it,” Forrest said. “He’s in Five, isn’t he?”

“He needs a _doctor_ , damn it,” Hawkins insisted. “We need to bring him to the infirmary! Now!”

“And say what? That he was hurt in a tunnel collapse?” Richmond’s voice was harsh. “If we do, the best case scenario is that Krauts will patch him up enough to shoot him. And probably the rest of us as well.”

Hawkins was not appeased. “What would you suggest, then? Let him die? Tell the Krauts he was _killed_ in a tunnel collapse?”

“We could say he tripped and hit his head on the stove,” Kinch suggested.

“They’re not stupid enough to believe that,” Forrest said. “We could say one of the guards beat him, maybe… no; they’d only deny it, and it would be obvious that we were hiding something. We could…” Desperately, he looked around the room, searching for inspiration. His gaze lit on Newkirk, and his still-bloodied face, and both of them knew what he was thinking.

“We could say he was fighting,” Newkirk said flatly. “They’d believe that.”

Forrest sighed. “Yes. I’m sorry. Fighting will get you punished…”

“But tunneling will get all of us shot. Or transferred like Dubois and his lot. I know. It’s all right.”

“No, it isn’t,” Forrest said bitterly.

“I can take it. Anyway, I’m about due; it’s been nearly a month since the last time I got called up on the carpet. They probably miss me down in the cooler. MacDonald, how bad off is Louie? Does he need to see the doctor too? We could say I took a swing at him as well, I guess. May as well hang for a sheep as a lamb.”

“No, he seems okay. I think he just needs to sleep it off. I guess you just beat up Browning,” MacDonald said.

“Sure. Just Browning,” Hawkins snarled. “ _Your_ little friend is just fine, and the whole goddamned barracks turns out to save _your_ worthless skin, and Browning gets left behind to die. Nothing ever changes, does it?”

“Hawkins, pipe down!” Forrest snapped. “Nobody’s been left behind, and nobody’s _going_ to be. We’re just wasting time, here. Somebody needs to carry Browning to the infirmary. At least two men, and carry him as gently as you can. If the Krauts ask any questions, and if we’re lucky they won’t, one of you needs to be ready to snitch.”

Hawkins’ lips curled back, exposing his teeth like a dog. “If it’s a grass we need, I’ll do it with pleasure,” he said. “Murderer. I hope this time they _do_ hang you.”

Newkirk, who by this point was the calmest man in the room, just looked at him for a moment. “Yeah. I know you do,” he said quietly. “I know. So get on with it; go shop me to the Krauts for fighting so we can get this poor sod off to the sawbones. Who knows? Maybe you’ll strike it lucky.” His voice dropped a tone or two, and it was suddenly leavened with something unidentifiable; anger, or contempt, or simple grief. “And it _still_ won’t change a damned thing. Now pick up your mate and _go_.”

Hawkins went.

Newkirk sighed, aware that everyone was staring at him and, for once, not happy about being the center of attention. Some of the men looked embarrassed, some simply uncomfortable; a few, damn it all, looked pitying, which set his teeth on edge. But he was well past the point of being able to do anything about it; he just sat back down on a random bunk and tried not to look at LeBeau’s too-still form.

Awkwardly, the rest of the men busied themselves with anything that came to mind. MacDonald returned to LeBeau and fussed over him ineffectually; Foxton and Richmond began clearing up the scattered dirt. Newkirk simply sat, head bowed, waiting for whatever was going to happen next.

“What happened between you two?” Kinch asked, sitting down beside him. “That wasn’t normal. What did you do to get him so angry?”

“Survived,” Newkirk said shortly. He left it at that for a long moment, then relented. Kinch deserved more truth than that, and it was hardly a secret, anyway. “I was on the same crew as his younger brother. Corporal James R. Hawkins. Our rear gunner, he was. We called him Jimmy.”

“He didn’t make it out when you were shot down, huh?”

“Oh, he made it out just fine,” Newkirk said. “Out of the plane, anyway. But his chute failed to deploy, and he went down like a ton of bricks.”

“Dear God,” Kinch muttered. Of all the nightmarish ways for a flyer to die, that was surely near the top of the list. “You’re… you’re sure? Maybe—”

“Yeah, I’m sure. Couldn’t be more sure. I _landed_ in him, mate.” He laced his fingers together, studied them intently. “I had bits of him smeared all down my flight suit. In my _hair_. Krauts found us before I’d quite finished tossing up everything I’d eaten that month, and that was that; the war was over for the both of us. Hawkins just figures that the wrong fellow got the dodgy chute.”

“That’s hardly fair.” Kinch wasn’t blind, and Newkirk—exhausted, overwrought, hurting and scared— wasn’t hiding the fact that he agreed with Hawkins’ assessment nearly as well as he thought he was. The scene in the tunnel was starting to make a lot more sense to him.

“It’s been a rough war for all of us. Jimmy was a good sort. I imagine Hawkins was, too, before this place broke him. If hating my guts is what’s keeping him going, better not to muck around with it. Sticks and stones, and all that. I don’t much care what he thinks of me.”

 _Sure you don’t._ ”Your crewmate. Jimmy. He was a good guy, huh?”

“That he was. Didn’t have a mean bone in him.” Newkirk smiled. “Reminded me of a puppy, you know the sort? Friendly, playful, and kind of… kind of innocent. Always bright and chipper and enthusiastic enough to make you want to fetch him a thump ‘round the earhole, but you never did because… well, because he was _Jimmy._ For some reason, that was enough to be going on with.”

“Yeah, I know the type,” Kinch said. He did, too. What a legacy for a man to leave behind, he thought. A hellishly ugly death, and a cripplingly ugly memory for the brothers—blood or otherwise—who still mourned him. It was a bitterly unfair epitaph for the man Newkirk was describing.

“Two years older than me, and about four inches taller, and he was _still_ the little brother we all tried to look out for, you know? Deserved a better end than he got. Ah, well,” he said, abruptly returning to business. “Look, when LeBeau wakes up, tell him to keep a lid on it, all right? When I get out, he can tell me what a bloody idiot I am to his heart’s content, but don’t let him go starting any _real_ fights in the meantime. Even if Hawkins starts in on him, hold him back before I end up with a neighbor, okay?”

“I will,” Kinch promised, as the door swung open.

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

There were four of them; three low-level grunts and a young captain, all in crisp SS uniforms, and they made the blood of every man in the camp run cold. Including the Kommandant.

“We are here for one of your prisoners, Herr Kommandant,” said the captain, with just enough respect in his voice to appease a man who, after all, outranked him, and just enough disdain to make it obvious that he had no real obligation to do so, and would cease being courteous whenever he pleased.

“I see,” said the Oflag’s Kommandant, one Colonel Weiss, and cleared his throat. “I am, of course, always ready to assist the SS in any way I can. May I inquire why you wish to speak with the prisoner?”

“You may not,” said the captain. “And I am not here to _speak_ with the prisoner; I am here to _take_ him. You have my written authorization to do so in your hand. It contains everything you need to know.”

“Of course,” said Weiss. “Your own facilities will be far more… convenient, I’m sure. When you are finished with him, I suppose—”

“When we are finished with him, he will no longer be your concern, Herr Kommandant,” snapped the captain. “He is no longer your concern _now_ , for that matter. Fetch this Colonel Hogan at once.”

“At once,” he repeated inanely. He opened his office door, barked an order at his adjutant, and slammed the door shut again. “Why don’t you take a seat while they locate the prisoner?”

The captain gave him the sort of look more usually reserved for things with too many legs found floating in the gravy. “Then you are not currently aware of your prisoners’ whereabouts? You cannot account for their movements at all times?” He smiled, slow and nasty, and slapped his gloves into the palm of his hand. “I will have to make a note of your methods of prison administration for my superiors.”

Weiss, true to his name, went the color of milk. “My prisoners are under close guard at all times. They are kept in the strictest—”

“Yes, yes, of course,” the captain said dismissively. “Of course. I don’t doubt your word in the slightest.”

Weiss could recognize sarcasm when he heard it, but he did at least have the wit to understand that, when at the bottom of a deep, deep hole, the only viable course of action is to _stop digging_. He smiled tightly at the young captain, who was casually examining his fingernails, and picked up the transfer paperwork.

One of the grunts watched him narrowly as he reread the paper, scribbled his signature on the relevant lines, and pushed it back across the desk, just as someone knocked at the door to his office.

“Herein,” he ordered.

The door opened. “Herr Kommandant? I have the prisoner you requested,” said the guard, holding Hogan firmly by the arm. What, precisely, he expected one unarmed man to do if left unrestrained was something of a mystery, Hogan thought bitterly. Did they think he was likely to wrest a weapon from one of the SS goons, singlehandedly subdue the entire complement, and escape while they were still lying on the ground shaking their fists ineffectually? Steal a tank? Or maybe just flap his arms hard enough to fly over the wire; it was about as reasonable.

The SS. Great. Presumably this had something to do with that Red Cross twit and his grandiose plans; they must have captured him, made him talk. Or else he’d been a German plant all along, looking for possible troublemakers, and, like a fool, he, Hogan, had walked straight into his trap. Well, they wouldn’t get anything out of him, he promised himself. Name, rank, serial number, and a hearty ‘Go to Hell,’ that was all.

The captain looked searchingly at Hogan for a moment, then picked up the transfer paperwork and stuffed it casually into his pocket. “Very good, Weiss,” he said. “Now, I’m certain you have… duties to which you must attend; I won’t take up any more of your ‘valuable’ time.”

“But Captain, I—”

“Take him,” he snapped to one of his flunkies, ignoring Weiss entirely. “Good day, Herr Kommandant.”

“But Captain…!”

“Have my staff car brought around,” he ordered. “ _I_ have duties to which I must attend, even if you do not.”

“Yes, Captain,” Weiss said, defeated.

Hogan let himself be marched out of the Kommandantur and into the compound with his head held high; he was holding on to what remained of his pride with his teeth and toenails, and being dragged into the car kicking and screaming wouldn’t help anything. Or change anything, for that matter. A few other prisoners were watching; first one, then the rest saluted in a silent farewell.

“So long, fellows,” he said gruffly. “See you in Berlin.”

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

Author’s note: No prizes for guessing why a certain young sergeant with a flair for explosives is going to strike a bit of a nerve with our favorite troublemaker once he shows up.


	15. Chapter 15

“So, Colonel Hogan,” said the captain, in a heavily accented English. “It is a pleasure to finally meet a man about whom I have heard so much.”

“Can’t say the same, I’m afraid,” Hogan said. “But don’t take it personally. I don’t have any Gestapo on my Christmas card list.”

“Not yet, anyhow,” the captain said. “Perhaps you will not send us Christmas cards, but I suspect that soon enough you will give us a great deal of information.”

“Don’t bet on it,” Hogan growled.

“I’m not going to,” said the captain. “I make it a point never to bet on sure things. It takes all the fun out of it, you understand.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard about the sort of ‘fun’ you bastards like. Well, you don’t scare me, get it?” That, as it happened, was a lie, but he didn’t think they needed to know that. “So you can take a running start and go straight to hell. You’re not getting anything out of me!”

The Germans exchanged looks all around. Then they traded smirks. Finally, one of them—not the captain this time; one of the grunts—said, in a cool, precise voice with no trace of a German accent, “Colonel, I’m not at all certain we’re talking about the same thing. Perhaps you simply don’t understand your situation…?”

“I understand just fine,” he snapped, then did a doubletake. “ _You?”_

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

Lange was at the door, accompanied by Richter and Otto. The latter two had apparently been on night watch; nobody looked terribly cheerful when standing guard at three in the morning, but they were fully dressed and looked at least semi-alert. Lange was not so fortunate; he was wearing red plaid flannel pajamas beneath his uniform overcoat and his shiny jackboots were on the wrong feet, an error of judgment that was not likely to improve his temper.

“What has been going on in this barracks? It’s well after lights out, or hadn’t you noticed?”

“Well, we were all a bit worried about our friend Browning,” Forrest said. “Please, sir; is he all right?”

“Ah, yes. Aircraftman Browning,” Lange said. “Most mysterious, how he came to be injured in the middle of the night. When he should have been sleeping.”

“Sir. It was an accident, sir,” Newkirk said. “You can see for yourself how crowded we are. He fell off the bunk, is all. Must have been dreaming.”

“Oh. He fell off the bunk. I see, Corporal. Of course,” he said. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

“Well, that’s what happened,” he said with fairly unconvincing bravado. “Just an accident.”

“A very convenient accident, it would seem,” Lange said. “Do you know what I think?”

 _Blimey, you old buzzard. We’re not even sure that you_ ** _can_** _think_. “No, sir…?”

“I think that you’re all hiding something. Something you don’t want me to know about.”

 _Your intellect continues to astound us all_. “I assure you, Herr Kommandant,” Forrest said helplessly. “I assure you; nothing happened. We’re not hiding anything. It was just an accident.”

“I’d never heard that accidents were contagious, Sergeant,” Lange snarled, stepping a bit closer to Newkirk. Roughly, he grabbed him by the jaw and turned his head, taking a closer look at the trickle of blood on his right temple. “Do you men think I’m _stupid?”_

 _Do you really want me to answer that?_ “I went to see if he was all right. Tripped and knocked my head on the stove in the dark,” Newkirk said.

“That,” Lange said triumphantly, “is not at all what your friend said happened.”

“Browning did crack himself a good one,” Newkirk said. “Can’t really expect the poor bugger to remember too clear—”

“ _Silence!”_ Lange bellowed. “This is your last chance. I am running out of patience. I want the truth, and I want it now!”

 _Well, Colonel, we all have things we want and aren’t going to get. You can add it to the list. It’s already the size of the Domesday Book; what’s a few more?_ Forrest cleared his throat. “Sir,” he said slowly. “It really was an accident.” It had the benefit of being true. They certainly hadn’t intended the tunnel to go rogue on them.

“Very good,” Lange said. “An accident. Perhaps I should cause some accidents of my own?” He untucked his riding crop from under his arm—why on earth did he have that in easy reach at three in the morning? Did he sleep with the blasted thing cuddled in his arms like a teddy bear?—and brought it down on the table with a vicious _crack_. “You are all lying. Are you hiding something? Protecting someone?” He brought the crop down on the table again. “It’s quite useless, you know,” he said pleasantly. “I already know exactly what happened.”

The sharp sound roused LeBeau. Groggily, he opened his eyes. To his horror, Lange was there, brandishing that absurd riding crop and glaring at Newkirk. Saying that he already knew what they had been doing, and that there was no use in trying to hide their actions. No use in trying to protect the guilty. Dazed, his mind reconstructed the events of the night as best he could. Tunnel. Collapse. Newkirk. Pain. Lange. Discovery. Punishment. _No. No! It’s all happening again. I can’t bear it, not again. Don’t do this, please, God, I beg You. Not again! Not him! Not like this! Please! Don’t leave me alone again!_

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

“What do you want from me?” Hogan growled. “Fine, you tricked me into volunteering for your little sabotage fantasy. I admit it. I’m a spy, or I would have been if I’d had half a chance. So shoot me and get it over with.”

Stephens smiled. “We have no intention of shooting you, Colonel. I’ve a few things of my own to admit, I suppose. I’m a spy, too. And so are my friends here.” His smile faded. “We’re not SS, Colonel Hogan. On my honor; we’re not. It was just an excuse to get you away from the camp.”

The captain nodded. His German accent melted away, replaced by just the faintest hint of a Scots burr. “Stephens is telling you the truth, Colonel. You needed a chauffeur out of the Oflag, and it’s rather an amazing thing, but when you’re wearing one of these damned clown suits, nobody argues with you. Especially not over such a minor matter as a single prisoner.”

One of the other rank-and-filers, in a New Orleans accent as thick and sweet as molasses, chimed in, “Nope, not SS. Not German at all, come to that. We can even tell you who won the World Series, if you like.”

Hogan blinked, then let the barest smile touch his lips as the adrenaline ebbed from his system. The slightly hysterical voice in the back of his head, which had been running through an incoherent litany of _capture torture death pain horror fear help no no no_ and the like, began to quiet. “No, that’s all right, thanks anyway. I lost a bundle on that game; the Giants really let me down. So… now what happens?”

“First, you come to London with us for a couple of weeks while we brief you for your new assignment. Several gentlemen with security clearances much higher than mine have all sorts of interesting things they’d like to tell you. And it was the Dodgers who let their fans down, not the Giants,” said the captain, with a quirked eyebrow to acknowledge Hogan’s little gambit. “You should have known better than to bet against the Yankees, anyhow. Oh, by the way. How’s your German?”

“It’s… adequate, I suppose,” Hogan said. He could get by, but hadn’t put much more effort into the language than had seemed strictly necessary. His lips tightened. He’d known ‘Kamarad,’ in any case.

“That’s another thing to do, then,” Stephens said. “Intensive language lessons; you’ll be speaking like a native inside a month.”

“Great. Well, if I’m going to be dressing up in Kraut glad rags, I guess it would be helpful if I sounded the part,” Hogan said.

“Indeed,” Stephens agreed. “In any case, once you’re ready, it’s back across the Channel, we put these uniforms on again, you get a strategic bruise or two as window dressing, Herr Kapitan Jamison, here, twirls his moustache and sneers in true Gestapo style, and we hand you over to the Kommandant of the stalag we’ve selected as your base of operations. After that, old chap, I’m rather afraid that you’re on your own.”

Hogan nodded. “I understand.” He cleared his throat. “Thank you. Don’t think I don’t realize that you fellows risked your lives to get me out of there. Thank you for that, and thank you for giving me a chance to get back into the war.”

“Good God, don’t thank us, Colonel Hogan,” said Stephens, who suddenly looked much older. “Getting you back in the war, as you put it… we’ve probably just signed your death warrant. Deep cover espionage in enemy territory? It’s mad. Suicidally mad.”

Hogan narrowed his eyes. “It’s what you guys do, isn’t it? Deep cover espionage?”

“Yes, it is,” said ‘Kapitan’ Jamison quietly. “But then… _we’re_ mad, too.”

“This is anything but a safe line of work, Colonel,” Stephens said. “A soldier may well be killed in battle; that’s hardly a secret. But a spy... The monsters who truly wear these uniforms are masters of dragging death out inch by inch, and sooner or later, everyone breaks. If you are caught, Colonel Hogan, you _will_ be tortured, and you _will_ confess. You _will_ betray your co-conspirators, myself included, before they allow you to die. And even if you aren’t caught, after the war is finally over, everything you’ve done, everything you’ve accomplished, everything you’ve suffered, will, in all probability, be hidden under a deep veil of secrecy. No recognition, no honors, no medals, no promotions, no gratitude.”

“You don’t get invited to many parties, do you?” Hogan turned a hand palm-up. “I didn’t join the service because I expected honors or gratitude, and I sure as hell didn’t agree to this cockamamie scheme of yours because I thought it sounded like the safe way to spend the war.”

Jamison and Stephens exchanged glances. “We did want to give you one last chance to back out,” Jamison said. “This operation is on a strictly volunteer basis, and we only want _informed_ volunteers.”

“Well, then, this is your lucky day, because that’s what you’ve got,” Hogan said firmly. “Anything’s better than seeing those Nazi bastards goose-stepping down Broadway.”

“I rather suspect they’d march down the Temple Bar before they turned their full attention to the United States, but I do take your point,” Stephens said, and he smiled again. Hogan realized that he’d just passed some sort of test. “You’re down the rabbit hole now, Colonel. Welcome back to the fight.”

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

“I know what you’ve done. Every last detail,” Lange said. “Did you honestly think you could fool me with these cock and bull stories about accidents and dreams? We Germans are always one step ahead of you pitiful vermin. How stupid can you be, Englander? Are you so fond of the cooler?”

“No, sir,” Newkirk said, lowering his head and letting his shoulders slump a bit. It was true. He was _used_ to it, but ‘fond’ was hardly the word he’d have chosen.

“Your friend Hawkins told me everything, Englander. Everything.” He stuck the tip of his riding crop under Newkirk’s chin, used it to force his head up. Newkirk glared at him.

“Well, so what if he did? I’m not sorry, and I’d do it again,” he said. “Some things a man’s just got to do, sir. And if that means the cooler, then I accept that, too. Sir.” Also entirely true on all counts. Really, all things considered, he was barely lying to the Germans at all. It felt unnatural. He usually preferred lying to the Krauts just on general principles. God knew they didn’t deserve the courtesy of truth.

Kinch shifted his position slightly. He was a fighter; he knew how to look imposing. Threatening. He was a good couple of inches taller than Newkirk. Usually that was all there was to it; he was taller. Now, though… now he loomed over him. “Sure,” he muttered, almost under his breath. “Go hide in the cooler, you rotten Limey bastard. But you won’t be there forever, and don’t think we’ll just forget the whole thing.”

Newkirk’s eyes widened in shock.

Lange looked at him, then over at the American. “Did you have something you wished to contribute to the discussion, Sergeant?”

“No, sir. Not really,” Kinch said calmly. “But if Hawkins told you the truth about what happened here tonight, sir, I’m sure you understand why the rest of us would be a bit… upset.”

“I suppose so,” Lange said slowly, and looked back at Newkirk, who looked as though he was trying to stifle his apprehension with one hand and hang on to the remains of his dignity with the other. Without a great deal of apparent success on either count. “Corporal? Anything to say in your own defense?”

Newkirk’s eyes flicked around the room like a cornered animal. He took a small but unmistakable step towards Lange. “No, sir. Nothing. Put me in the cooler if you have to. I… I confess; what I did was wrong. I’m sorry, sir.”

Kinch almost smiled. _Do anything you like to me, Herr Kommandant Fox, but please, please don’t throw me in that briar patch!_ He blew out an exasperated breath. “I’ll just bet you are,” he growled.

LeBeau, aghast at the apparent betrayal, and still only about halfway back to the land of the living, which accounted for his being far slower on the uptake than usual, shot Kinch a furious scowl that should have taken a good five years off his life expectancy. “ _Cochon! Salopard! How dare you_ —”

“ _Ta gueule!_ ” Kinch snapped, and promised himself that he’d apologize as soon as possible. “You’ll get your chance. We’ll settle this after he’s _back_ , all right, Corporal? When Newkirk gets _back,_ we can handle this our own way _._ ”

Forrest put a firm hand on LeBeau’s shoulder and squeezed hard. “Right. Thirty days isn’t so very long. Is it, Corporal.”

Lange looked around. LeBeau’s impassioned rage, Kinch’s understated menace, Forrest’s cold contempt. Newkirk’s defensive uneasiness. “Well, well, Englander. Apparently your friend Hawkins left out a few details after all.”

“My _friend_ Hawkins is about as reliable as—” Newkirk cut himself off. Nervously, he brushed a hand over his temple, smearing the blood a bit further along his cheekbone. “What I mean, sir, is maybe he, well… no disrespect intended, sir, but maybe—”

“Enough!” Lange’s lips curled into something between a sneer and a smirk. “We are all grown men, are we not? You men may be prisoners, but surely you can settle your own differences like civilized adults. Corporal Newkirk, you are confined to the barracks for thirty days; half rations, no privileges. The rest of you gentlemen… Sergeant Forrest, I trust you’ll put an end to this distasteful little affair, will you not? You’ll arbitrate any further discussions of the matter as befits your rank and position?”

Forrest saluted, his eyes gleaming. “Yes, sir. Consider the situation handled, sir.”

Lange smiled like a wolf, tucked his riding crop back under his arm, and shoved a cowering Newkirk back towards the knot of grim, hostile prisoners. “Very good. Dismissed!”

As he swept out the door, accompanied by his faithful, if sleepy, shadows, the barracks went very quiet, then exploded into a flurry of back-slapping, stifled laughter, and naked relief. The tunnel was safe. The Germans hadn’t even _looked_ for a tunnel. They weren’t going to be shot. Newkirk was still in one piece. Unbelievably, impossibly, miraculously, they had gotten away with everything. _Everything!_

“Hey, Pete—correct me if I’m wrong, but did I just hear what I thought I heard? Did Lange just give us permission to beat the tar out of you?” Kinch asked. _Born and bred in a briar patch._

“Don’t you get any ideas, mate. Maybe _he_ did, but I didn’t!” Newkirk said. “I’ll just limp a bit at roll call tomorrow, which, truth be told, I rather think I’d’ve been doing anyway. But thanks for being so threatening; that sadistic Kraut bastard really loved the idea of getting you lot to do his dirty work for him. Strewth; I half believed you myself. That’s two I owe you, now.”

“Forget it. Just let me win at poker once in a while; that’s all I ask.”

“I didn’t say I owed you _that_ much,” Newkirk said, grinning at him. He slung an arm around LeBeau’s shoulders. “In fact, now that I come to think of it, if I _had_ ended up in the cooler, I’d’ve missed all that lovely digging we’re going to have to do just to get the tunnel back to where it was this morning. Suddenly, I’m not so sure I’m all that grateful, mate.”

Richmond snorted. “Grateful or not, you’re right about one thing; we’ve got a hell of a lot of digging to do, and if you’re stuck in the barracks for the next month _anyway_ , it all works out quite nicely. Think of it this way—Lange all but ordered us to put you six feet underground. The tunnel goes down at least ten. We wouldn’t want to disappoint our beloved Kommandant, now would we?”

“Oh, perish the thought,” Newkirk said, rolling his eyes. “Perish the bloody thought.”

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

Author’s note: The ‘Brer Rabbit’ folktales, including the one referenced here, have a tangled and somewhat fraught history. Anthropologically speaking, there doesn’t seem to be much doubt that they were derived from ante-bellum African American sources, which were in turn derived from much older African myths involving trickster characters like Anansi the Spider. And culturally speaking, there’s no doubt at all that they’ve been retold and reinterpreted in ways that are often… shall we say ‘extremely problematic’ and leave it at that? But literarily speaking, the stories themselves are absolutely delightful, and Brer Rabbit is one of the great tricksters of myth and legend. Enid Blyton, a British children’s writer, published a version of some of the stories, blessedly sans dialect, in the early 30s. Peter would probably have been a bit too old for them, but perhaps he’d have read them to Mavis?

Note on language: LeBeau is calling Kinch a few names that are distinctly unfriendly. Kinch is replying with a version of ‘shut up’ that goes all the way through unfriendly and out the other side. Don’t use it in polite company. In fact, don’t use it in impolite company, either.


	16. Chapter 16

He wasn’t six feet under. And he wasn’t ten feet under, either; it was more like twelve or fifteen. Newkirk jabbed his shovel into the packed dirt and dumped it into the almost-full bucket, topping it off. Three others, also full, were ranged behind him. He sighed, flexed his sore shoulders, and picked them up, two in each hand, to bring them back to the mouth of the tunnel for disposal.

He was eight days into the thirty, and to say he was going more than a bit stir-crazy was understating the matter. The cooler was generally agreed to be unbearable; being restricted to the barracks was unbearable in an entirely different way. It was the difference between imagining what the rest of the camp was doing without him and _watching_ the rest of the camp going on with their lives without him, and it wasn’t much of an improvement.

Mind you, just about anything was better than the cooler, and he wasn’t ungrateful for Kinch’s quick thinking. Still, in the cells, he was trapped in a very small room; the steel doors were locked, and there was nothing he could do about it. In the barracks, he was trapped in a marginally larger room, fully aware that nothing was really keeping him there but words. He had to be his own locked door, and he hated it.

They weren’t supposed to be inside during the day; it made the Krauts nervous. They weren’t supposed to be lying about on their bunks goldbricking; it made the Krauts tetchy. Standing about talking made the Krauts suspicious, running across the compound made the Krauts cross, loitering near buildings made the Krauts annoyed, and wandering too close to the fences made them trigger-happy. There wasn’t much a kriegie could do that _didn’t_ irritate the Krauts; that was a given. But being in the barracks during the day was definitely one of the things they frowned upon.

So the others weren’t there very much. He was alone in an echoingly empty room, and it was driving him ‘round the bend. There had been an abortive attempt at loopholery, a few days back; he’d stood at the window, and LeBeau had stood on the ground outside, and they’d begun what was shaping up to be rather a good discussion of the artistic merits of the musical stylings of George Formby, keeping strictly to the letter of the law as regarded who was supposed to be where. Their circumvention of the rules had, sadly, drawn the attention of one of the guards right around the time that LeBeau was forcefully opining that the aforementioned Mr. Formby’s ukulele would serve a far nobler purpose if used as firewood, a view with which Newkirk simply could not sympathize. The guard, no music-lover, upon joining their little round-table discussion, ended the matter with an eloquent appeal to reason that sent LeBeau scurrying to join Forrest’s halfhearted calisthenics session and Newkirk away from a firmly shuttered window, sporting a bruised jaw apiece.

It had been a discouraging sort of incident, and it had not been improved by the fact that Newkirk had then found himself humming ‘Bless ‘Em All’ for the next five hours. He was fond of Formby, and, for that matter, of ‘Bless ‘Em All,’ but very few pieces of music, if any at all, are still enjoyable five hours on. LeBeau, much to his disgust, had found himself humming it as well, and he didn’t think it was enjoyable for the first five minutes, let alone anything more than that.

Redigging the collapsed tunnel was grindingly hard, slow, dull work. It was unpleasant, and it was painful, and, given recent events, it was frightening, and it was exactly what he needed. It was better than staring at the walls or listening to his fingernails grow, and it was a great deal better than thinking about… a great many things that he didn’t want to think about. Like Browning. After a day spent at hard labor, straining every muscle to the utmost in the cramped environs, he usually fell asleep as soon as his head hit the mattress, and if there were dreams, he never remembered them in the morning. Which was something else to be grateful for.

Dinnertime eventually rolled around. With a sigh, he brushed himself off, scrambled back into the barracks, and stood by the door. Jager, right on schedule, opened it, and grudgingly handed over a small chunk of bread and a cup of lukewarm cabbage water.

“Allo, Jager,” said Newkirk. “I’d almost forgotten I’d ordered room service.”

“Silence, Englander,” Jager grumbled. “I have better things to do than bring you food.”

“I know, and I do appreciate you taking the trouble. It looks positively divine. What flavor of sawdust is the chef using today; pine or oak?”

Jager just scowled, and put his hand on his truncheon.

“Always a pleasure talking with you, sir,” Newkirk said, and stepped back into the barracks before the guard could get any clever ideas. Jager slammed the door shut behind him as he left.

Newkirk sat down at the table and considered his options. He wasn’t interested in eating his dinner, and the tepid dishwater in the mug wasn’t making him change his mind about that. Intellectually, he recognized that, after eight days of hard work and short rations, the fact that he wasn’t even feeling hungry anymore was a very bad sign, but he didn’t have the energy or the inclination to worry about it. He dunked the bread in the soup, let it soak long enough to soften a bit, and ate the whole squashy lump in two bites. Then he tossed back the remainder of the broth, quickly enough that he didn’t have to taste it. There. That was one more chore over with.

He got up, walked to the tunnel entrance, then changed his mind. No more digging. His back was aching, and he was too tired; someone else could pick up where he’d left off. He climbed up into his bunk and stretched out, just for a minute or two. Or five. Ten at the most. Then he was asleep.

The others rattled back into the barracks about an hour later. “Wake up, Sleeping Beauty,” Richmond lilted, rapping hard on the uprights of the bunk.

“Wha… oh. Ugh. Right, right; I’m up,” Newkirk muttered, swinging his legs over the edge of the mattress. He landed on the floor nearly as gracefully as ever.

“Goldbricking again?” Kinch asked, a small smile taking the sting from the words.

“Twenty-four karat, mate,” Newkirk said. “It’s just about back to where we were before this whole mess began. Which, sad to say, means it’s back to chipping away at rock-hard dirt and tree roots and all that bloody rubbish, but there you are.”

“Wait—you’re serious? You got all the way back to where we were? By _yourself_?” Forrest investigated the sandbags they used to transport the dirt for disposal. They were full to bursting.

Newkirk shrugged. “It’s really ruddy boring in here.”

“If it is any consolation, you missed very little by not being on the work detail,” LeBeau said. “Pulling weeds is not much fun at the best of times, and having a Boche aiming a rifle at your back while you do it adds all sorts of excitement. All the _wrong_ sorts of excitement.”

 _Worth it to be outside of the wire for a while,_ Newkirk managed not to say aloud. “I’ll admit that does sound like the sort of party I’d rather not attend,” he said instead.

“The Donner Party looked pretty good by comparison,” Kinch said.

A barracks’ worth of blank looks intersected on his skull. “Er… precisely who were the Donners?” Richmond asked diffidently.

Kinch chuckled. Sometimes it was hard to remember that he was the only American in the group. And sometimes they went and forcefully reminded him of that fact. “A bunch of guys who should have picked a better caterer,” he said easily.

“Speaking of which,” Forrest said. “Foxton, it was your turn, wasn’t it?”

“Right,” Foxton said, and fumbled in his pocket. The men were taking it in turns to smuggle food into the barracks— seeing as how the tunnel belonged to all of them, Forrest had pointed out that it was hardly fair that the penalty for protecting it had fallen on a single head, and, given that fact, he thought that each man could easily afford to be generous for a single day out of the thirty.

No one had had the temerity to argue with anything so seemingly reasonable, but, so far, seven men had had their offerings surreptitiously pushed back into their hands and been told to keep quiet about it. And Foxton would have almost certainly been number eight if the door had not swung open just then.

Hawkins stalked into the barracks. His face was stony, but the mutinous anger that radiated from him was almost visible. He kicked the door violently shut behind him.

“Hawkins? What’s wrong?” Richmond said.

Hawkins didn’t look up. “Browning’s dead,” he said flatly. “They told me when I went over to check in on him. The medics said he never had a chance; there was nothing they could have done for him. If they even _tried._ That rock, or whatever it was, did something to his brain. He never woke up. And now he’s dead.” His message delivered, he climbed into the bunk that was now his alone, pulled the blanket over his head, and turned his face to the wall.

Forrest looked shattered. “Damn it,” he mumbled. He glanced at Newkirk, and said it again.

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

The next morning, they were chivvied into the compound for roll call, as usual. They were not dismissed after they had been counted and tallied; that was not usual.

A few of the burlier guards, all carrying axes, sledgehammers, and other carpentry tools, converged on Barracks Two. The men were left to stand in the compound while a great deal of violently cacophonous work went on inside the hut. The sound of the guards smashing what was, for lack of a better word, at least for the time being, their home, wasn’t exactly pleasant for any of them. The thought of the guards destroying the comfortless beds and their meager possessions was heartbreaking enough; they had so little left to lose that even the scraps and pieces of what had been their lives were invaluable. But there was a deeper, more bloodcurdling possibility, and there wasn’t a man among them who wasn’t trying not to think about it.

LeBeau flicked a glance at Newkirk. _Do you think that they are looking for the tunnel? Or worse… do you think they already know about the tunnel?_ His poker face wasn’t quite as good as it might have been. Dubois and his friends—and their fate—were suddenly there, a ghostly presence among them.

Newkirk met his glance, rolled his eyes ever-so-slightly in answer. It was not hard to guess what LeBeau was thinking. _Sod’s Law being what it is… yes, Louie, they probably are._ He was already counting the cost of another failed escape, and not liking the estimated totals in his head. Part of him was hoping that, if worst came to worst, he’d be able to shield his friends from the bitterest consequences. Another part of him was hoping that, if absolute worst came to worst, the Kommandant would not remember the conversation they had had after his _last_ attempt at shielding his friends from said consequences. Newkirk didn’t scare easily. That conversation, and the Kommandant’s matter-of-fact threats, had scared him.

They were left standing there for hours; finally, just before supper, Schultz, who had taken no active role in the carpentry, was given some sort of signal. “Achtung! Prisoners, you are dismissed! You may all return to the barracks.”

They did so. Most of the barracks was just as they had left it, including, emphatically, the hidden entrance to the tunnel, but the far end of the room had been partitioned off. Several bunks had been removed, and replaced with a desk and chair, a crude wardrobe, and a few other bits and pieces.

“Someone’s getting a private room?” LeBeau said.

“Sure looks that way,” Newkirk said. “And here all this time I’ve just been getting myself tossed in the cooler when I wanted a bit of privacy.”

“Privacy just got that much harder to come by,” Forrest said, disgusted. “They removed four bunks to build this little bungalow. We’re going to have to either triple up in the remaining beds or shift a few people back onto the floor.”

“Bloody charming,” Newkirk said. “Just what we needed around here. _Less_ space. The lads will be overjoyed.”

Before anyone else could say anything, the door opened again. This time it was Schultz, looking as miserable as any of them. “Achtung,” he said halfheartedly. “Corporal Newkirk? Where is Newkirk?”

“I’m here, Schultzie,” Newkirk said. He knew what was coming next.

Schultz sighed. “The Kommandant does not want _two_ prisoners killed. You will go to the cooler after all.”

“Figured as much,” Newkirk said, stone-faced. “For how long?”

“I do not know. I do not ask questions. I do not want to ask questions. You should not ask questions, either,” Schultz reproved. “There is a verrrrry important prisoner coming to Stalag 13 soon. An _officer_. The Kommandant does not want there to be any trouble when he arrives, and always you make trouble. So. It is the cooler.” His expression softened. “I am sorry, Englander. But it is not up to me.”

Newkirk nodded. “First I miss the work detail, now I’m not going get to meet some toffee-nosed officer. Must’ve been born under an unlucky star. Right, then. So long, mates,” he said, almost breezily enough. “Guess I’ll be getting some privacy after all.”

Schultz opened the door again, started to lead Newkirk out, but he jerked away. “Wait, Schultzie. One more thing. Forrest? You’ll be writing the letter to Browning’s parents, right?” He swallowed. “Tell them I’m sorry, would you?”

Forrest nodded, then shook his head—yes, he would be writing the condolence letter, no, Newkirk had nothing to apologize for—but finally he just said, simply, “I’ll tell them.”

The door slammed shut behind them, and the barracks was quiet for a moment. At which point LeBeau picked up a tin mug and threw it against the wall as hard as he could, muttering something in rapid, venomous French that no one, not even the most monolingual, really needed to have translated. His eyes blazing, he turned to Forrest. “I will dig now,” he announced. “I will dig all night, every night, if I must, and we will have the tunnel ready whenever they let him out, _n’est-ce pas_? _These stupid, evil_ _Boche… it is they who killed Browning. It is they who are responsible for all of this. I don’t care if that bastard Lange is trying to show off for the entire High Command; this is—”_

“Take it easy, Corporal!” Forrest ordered. “We’re all going to work on the tunnel, but we’re going to do it _carefully_. No more bodge jobs. We’ll do it right. And whoever this officer is, whatever he’s up to… we’ll manage him, too. But get ahold of yourself, man. Newkirk can take care of himself, and flying off the handle does no good at all!”

LeBeau snapped to attention, but his eyes still burned. “Yes, Sergeant,” he said flatly. “But it is my shift; I will dig for a while. If I may.”

“Go ahead,” Forrest said. The Frenchman needed some way to vent his frustration, and chipping away at hard-packed dirt was as good a way as any, he supposed. He looked around the barracks. The men all looked miserable in their own ways. Hawkins was back in his bunk, presumably grieving. LeBeau was ready to explode, Richmond wasn’t far behind, and Kinch looked openly worried. Browning was dead. Newkirk was effectively out of the picture for the foreseeable future. Some sort of brass was coming to the camp, for reasons he could only imagine. It was genuinely hard to see how things could possibly get worse.

Forrest thought that he would rather like to throw a few bits of dishware, himself.

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

A week later, a truck rolled in through the gates. Kinch happened to be nearby, and watched as a pair of black-uniformed thugs half-dragged a man out of it, and hustled him straight into the Kommandantur. The man was wearing a leather bomber jacket and a crush cap with a golden American eagle pinned proudly on the front, and despite the cuffs on his wrists and a truly impressive shiner, he looked far more in control of himself than a man in his position had any right to look.

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

Author’s note: And… enter Hogan. He has his work cut out for him, the poor fellow; morale is at an all-time low, the men are suspicious, and the Germans are, too.

George Formby was a British actor/singer. He played the ukulele, (rather brilliantly, I might add,) and sang some of the most charmingly dirty songs you can imagine. He did in fact do a cover of ‘Bless ‘Em All’ during WWII, (as did pretty much everyone else in show biz at the time, far as I can tell,) but the song actually comes from WWI, if not earlier. The song is about various delightful aspects of military life, including the noncoms, bless ‘em all. When sung by soldiers, as opposed to performers who had to worry about obscenity laws, the word ‘Bless’ was replaced by a slightly more honest choice of verb.


	17. Chapter 17

The new man glanced around the compound. It was his first good look at the place, if ‘good’ was the appropriate word for it. There were patches of dirty snow on the ground, the rickety barracks would probably collapse if looked at cross-eyed, and the wire fence looked like the personification of despair. Men were milling about in a desultory fashion. Some of them looked dead. Others just looked as though they wished they were. The Oflag had been bad. This was worse.

The induction lecture he’d just gotten from his new Kommandant had been fairly similar to the one he’d heard from his previous one. Nazis good, Allies bad, toe the line or play the price, abandon all hope, ye who enter here, heil Hitler. For that matter, the Kommandant himself was fairly similar to the one he’d met at the Oflag, as though the Krauts had rolled them out from the same cookie cutter, in bulk. Perhaps Lange was a bit more intelligent than Weiss had been, perhaps a bit crueler, but the arrogance, the sour self-satisfaction had been very familiar. It set his teeth on edge just as much as it had the first time.

The men, it seemed, were studiously avoiding his eye, casually turning away if he chanced to look in their direction, under the guise of adjusting a jacket or lighting a cigarette; it was not encouraging. Jamison had insisted that, according to Stephens, the men imprisoned here were clever, well-disciplined potential operatives. Going strictly by surface impressions, he was beginning to suspect that he’d been sent to the wrong place. Perhaps Stephens had meant to say Stalag 14.

“Not exactly the welcome I’d hoped for,” Hogan said aloud, and tugged his jacket a bit tighter. Even the eagles on his collar were shivering in the cold. A passing sergeant happened to hear him, and chuckled.

“All due respect, Colonel, but what exactly were you expecting?” the man said, with an ironic half-smile. “We’re a bit short on ticker tape at the moment.”

“Ticker tape I could forgo,” Hogan replied. “But some basic indications of life would have been nice. This place looks like a graveyard.”

“It pretty much is,” he said, with no humor in his voice. “Trust a medic on that one. It doesn’t help that we just had a death.”

“Damn. What happened?”

“Head injury,” he said brusquely. “He was in a coma for a few days; didn’t make it.”

Hogan nodded. He knew medics; the good ones always seemed to take it personally if they lost a patient, but this one was downright furious. It must have been bad. “I’m sorry to hear that, Sergeant…?”

“Wilson,” the medic said, and saluted briefly.

“Nice to meet you, Wilson,” Hogan said, returning the salute, and took a chance. “Speaking of trusting a medic. I’m sure that everyone knows by now that I’m going to be the senior POW around this joint, at least until they get their mitts on a general. Can I ask you to give me a few insights on my new command?”

Wilson blinked. “Er… all right. This place is hell on earth. What else did you want to know?”

“That’s a good overview, but I was kind of hoping for a few more details,” Hogan said. “What’s the situation here? What are the men like?”

“Mixed bag,” Wilson began. “Brits, Canadians, Australians, Free French, a couple of Russians. Americans are starting to trickle in, slow but steady. All enlisted, so you’re already sticking out like a sore thumb, _Colonel_. We’re on starvation rations, there’s nothing to burn in the stoves most of the time, and Red Cross packages are a fairy tale. Basically, sir, conditions are grim and morale’s pretty much in the toilet.”

“Any escapes?”

“Depends on how you mean it. Lots of guys have tried, all unsuccessfully. None since I’ve been here, so this is all secondhand, but from what I’ve heard, most of them never made it more than ten feet past the wire. Hell, most of them never made it as _far_ as the wire. Of the ones that did, a couple were killed in the attempt, and the ones who weren’t were all tracked down and returned within a day or so. What happened after that depended on how angry the Kommandant was that particular day. The lucky ones just spent some quality time in the cooler. At least three were put up against the wall and shot, some were sent to other camps, and one was tied to the flagpole and whipped half to death at morning roll call. Presumably as a salutary lesson to the rest of us.”

Hogan winced. “Sounds like the Geneva Convention’s honored more in the breach than the observance. Great.” He fussed with his cap for a moment. “You said morale’s a problem. How about loyalty? Is there anyone you’d trust to keep their mouth shut, or would they all sell their grandmothers for an extra slice of bread?”

“A few would, maybe,” Wilson conceded. “Mostly good men, though. None of those escape attempts failed because of a snitch. Bad planning, yeah, bad execution, for sure, or bad luck, in spades, but no rats, at least not so far as I’m aware.”

“Well, that’s a big step in the right direction. This sort of operation is going to need some pretty specialized skills, but it’s also going to depend on trust.”

Wilson’s eyes narrowed. “Operation? Either you’re planning to muscle in on my turf, sir, or you’re thinking of something a bit more involved than a simple break-out…?

Hogan smiled, his heart in his throat. He already knew he liked the gruff medic, that his instincts were telling him that this was a man who cared enough about the sanctity of life that he could be trusted. But gut instincts were only that. “And if I am?”

“God knows I’m all in favor of anything that gives the damned Krauts some trouble,” Wilson said slowly. “And I know a lot of other guys feel the same. But I don’t know how much of a chance… you’re probably wasting your time.”

“Time’s all I’ve got until the war’s over, it would seem,” Hogan said cheerfully. “You said ‘a lot of other guys.’ Anyone you’d recommend I approach? You know the men; I don’t.”

“Huh.” Wilson shoved his hands into his pockets, rocked back on his heels, thinking hard. “Well, I don’t know them, not really. I’ve only been in for a month or so myself, and around here, trust is something that has to be earned. Being a medic has opened a few doors— not to mention a few mouths— because it’s me or nothing, but I’m hardly in a position to give you much in the way of biographical information.”

“Okay. That’s fair,” Hogan said. “Do you have any suggestions as to who I should ask, then?”

“You might want to start with the barracks chiefs,” Wilson said. “You’re the senior POW now; it would be perfectly natural for you to want to get a handle on who’s who. Nothing suspicious in asking the guys who are _supposed_ to know that kind of thing; the Krauts shouldn’t get too antsy about it. And neither should the kriegies.”

“That’s right,” Hogan said. “I’d be doing that anyway. But I meant, do you have any suggestions as to where I should start? Are there any barracks that strike you as interesting?”

“Oh. Well… try Two. Details are more than a bit sketchy, but apparently they were the instigators of some sort of campwide plot a few months before I got here. Good, bad, or indifferent, I don’t know, but the fact that they got everyone else to fall in line says something in and of itself.”

Hogan looked pleased. “That’s a break. I was assigned quarters there, so a little glad-handing and nosiness will be expected.”

“Kinch lives there; you could try talking to him. Nice fellow; we came in on the same transport, so he probably doesn’t have much more in the way of details than I do about what happened back then, but he’s a smart guy, keeps his head in a crisis, and everyone likes him. Kinch could probably—er, sorry. That’s Sergeant Kinchloe. He’s an American. Radioman, I think.”

“Kinchloe. Okay, point him out to me when you can, and we’ll see.”

“You can’t miss him. He’s a big guy. I think he boxed or wrestled or something nerve-wracking like that, and I sure as hell wouldn’t have liked to face him in the ring. Oh, and one other thing. He’s black. That a problem?”

Hogan looked at him, disbelief in every line. “I want men who are smart, brave, loyal, and able to think on their feet. I want them to take risks no one should ever have to face and manage the impossible every day before breakfast, and I want them to do it all from the worst place in the world. Voluntarily. I’m hunting for unicorns, Sergeant, and I know it. You think I care about _color_?”

Wilson relaxed. “Had to ask, sir. You’d be surprised how goddamned stupid some of the other men could get on the subject. Glad you’re not going to be one of them.”

“You don’t much believe in beating around the bush, do you?”

“I’m a medic, Colonel,” Wilson said with that half-smile again. “I don’t have the time or the temperament for playing games. I was a doctor until I lost my patience.”

Hogan chuckled. “I’ll keep that in mind. I appreciate honesty, Sergeant. I’ll probably have a few more questions for you along the way.”

“If I can be of any help, I’m happy to. Just… whatever it is you’ve got in mind, try not to send too much business my way, will you?”

“I’ll try,” Hogan said, serious again.

Wilson nodded his thanks, and watched as the colonel strode purposefully towards Barracks Two, hoping that Hogan would be able to keep that promise. Hogan hoped so, too.

*.*.*.*.*.*

Barracks Two was just as bad as Hogan had expected, maybe even a bit more so. Ramshackle bunks with paper-thin mattresses were crammed in most of the available space, and if the roof wasn’t leaking, it was only because it wasn’t currently raining. It smelled of musty straw, unwashed bodies, and incongruously fresh sawdust, the latter apparently an artifact of the renovation of the newly designated officers’ quarters, to which he had been politely escorted by the barracks chief. What was his name, again? Woods? No, no—Forrest, that was it. So far, the young sergeant was as stiff and polite as a new-minted cadet on parade; Hogan only hoped that there would, eventually, prove to be a human being inside the well-hidden wariness and British reserve.

The officers’ quarters were surprisingly spacious compared to the rest of the barracks; there was a single desk and a single wardrobe, but a bunk bed with space for two. He wondered if he was going to have a roommate, and, if so, who it would be. Possibly Forrest himself?

“How many men are housed in this barracks?” There. That was a nice, neutral question that could not possibly be construed as a criticism or otherwise make the man nervous.

“Counting you, sir? Thirty-thr… I mean, thirty-two, sir,” Forrest said, momentary sadness flickering across his face. “Well, thirty-one, at the moment. We have a man in the cooler.”

Hogan blinked. “Thirty-two? You’re telling me that the Krauts have been cramming more than thirty men into this miserable excuse for a doghouse? What the hell have you been doing? Sleeping standing up?”

“We’ve been doubling or tripling up since the beginning, sir,” Forrest said. “Some of the men sleep on the floor, especially in the warmer weather; we’re still hashing out a new arrangement.”

“I take it that setting up my little bachelor pad threw a spanner or two into the works?”

 _You’re damned right it did._ ”Nothing we can’t handle, sir,” Forrest said. “These are good men; they’re no strangers to making the best of our situation here.”

“I’m sure of it,” Hogan said. “I’m looking forward to meeting them all.”

Forrest, momentarily forgetting to whom he was speaking, chuckled sardonically. “Well, sir, the way the war is going, you’ll certainly have enough time to—” His eyes widened, and he stopped short. “I’m sorry, sir—no disrespect intended, of course. I just meant… I meant…”

“You meant that, the way the war is going, I’ll have plenty of time to get to know you fellows,” Hogan said, smiling. “You’re probably right.”

Forrest let out a relieved breath. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

“Which isn’t to say that these overcrowded conditions are in any way acceptable,” Hogan continued smoothly. “I’ll have to have a little chat with the Kommandant about that.”

If Hogan had said that he intended to go slow-dancing with the Fuhrer, Forrest could not have looked more nonplussed. “Sir? Are you sure… that is, do you mean… beg pardon, sir, I just meant that Kommandant Lange… he’s not usually interested in hearing from the prisoners…?”

 _In other words, Sergeant, you want to know if I’m stupid, masochistic, or just plain crazy._ ”As the senior POW, I have a responsibility to see to it that the men are treated according to the Geneva Convention. So far as I can tell, you’re _not_. If Colonel Lange doesn’t shape up and start to abide by the laws of civilized warfare, I’ll make a protest to the International Red Cross and the Protecting Powers.”

Forrest’s lips tightened. The International Red Cross had already let him down once, and he didn’t have much hope that a second sally would turn out any differently. And did this gormless Yank honestly think that Lange was going to simply fall in line after a gentle reminder that abusing prisoners was generally considered impolite? “I appreciate that you want to improve the conditions here, sir,” he said, finally. “But, Colonel… the Kommandant… oh, blast it, sir. No disrespect intended, sir, but he will not take kindly to being corrected. He’s more likely to punish you for speaking out of turn, and then punish the rest of us, sir, just to prove to you that he can. The Geneva Convention doesn’t matter to Nazis. And they’ve made damn sure we know that, somehow, it doesn’t apply to us.”

Hogan pushed back his cap, and gave Forrest a slow, piercing look. The young airman stood his ground. Rank and protocol be damned; Forrest, a seasoned prisoner, considered that he owed Hogan a fair warning before he took it into his head to play football with a hornet’s nest. Especially given that he seemed to be doing so out of sheer altruism and a sense of responsibility towards the men. Hogan was a grown man and an officer; he had the right to put his own neck (and, for that matter, theirs,) into whatever noose he chose, but Forrest considered it only decent to make certain that, if he did, it would not be out of ignorance. And he prayed that Hogan would either listen to reason or, at least, refrain from dragging the others down with him.

“Well, Forrest,” Hogan said, a miniature eon or two later. Yes. Stephens had been right to send him here. These were men he could work with. “That’s just it. Whoever told you that… he was wrong. The Krauts can’t just get away with the garbage they’re pulling. That’s what I’m here for. And if Lange can’t be made to see reason, well, we’ll just have to get rid of him, that’s all.”

Forrest’s mouth dropped open, just the tiniest bit. He shut it with a snap, completely and entirely at a loss for words. The Yank was utterly insane. Had to be. And yet… it took him a moment to recognize that he was feeling the beginnings of hope.

*.*.*.*.*

Author’s note: Wilson’s wisecrack, ‘I was a doctor until I lost my patience,’ is an old joke borrowed from my grandfather, a WWII veteran. It is not intended to imply that Wilson was actually a qualified doctor.


	18. Chapter 18

Hogan, somewhere between impressed and appalled, watched as the men fitted themselves into the bunks in twos and threes, with no fuss and no arguments. The top rack of the bunk nearest the door, he noticed, was shared by the largest man and the smallest. Presumably, he thought, they averaged themselves out.

Going by Wilson’s description, Hogan guessed that the tall man was the aforementioned Sergeant Kinchloe. The smart, levelheaded one that everyone liked. He’d have to find out for himself how much of that was true, but Wilson had certainly gotten at least one thing right. Hogan wouldn’t have liked to face him in the ring, either. Hard treatment and short rations hadn’t yet managed to erode his physique, and, if the kind eyes and faint smile were any indication, they hadn’t broken his spirit, either. He had no idea who the small Frenchman was, but that could wait for the morning.

No one said a word as they got themselves ready for bed. Hogan knew that his presence was at least partly to blame for that—he reeked of ‘officer,’ for one thing, he’d been responsible for blowing their sleeping arrangements clear to hell, for another, and, of course, as a newcomer, there was always the chance that he was a spy or a snitch. Tactfully, he retreated into his own room, closing the door firmly behind him, and, for lack of anything better to do, crawled into the sack, feeling slightly guilty as he sprawled across the full surface of the horrible mattress. He’d have to do something about the overcrowding. ASAP. This was unconscionable. There had to be something in the Geneva Convention about not forcing the men to spoon. Hadn’t there? And if there wasn’t, could Lange be snowed into thinking that there was?

He made lists in his head as he lay there. First, he’d have to sort out the men. Find out who was who and what was what; who would be useful, who was dead weight, who was trustworthy, who wasn’t. Who needed to be quietly shuffled elsewhere, and who could be persuaded to stay here in hell. Who might balk, who might betray, who might break. Written personnel files would be nice. If he could get enough paper. _Could_ he get enough paper?

Morale needed work. For that matter, general health and well-being needed some work, too. The men looked like scarecrows; too thin, too ragged, too weatherbeaten. He had to do something. If he could organize some firewood, or better food, or whatever else, it would go some distance towards establishing his own trustworthiness.

So much to do. First of all, they’d need tunnels. There had to be at least one, and preferably several, ways in and out of camp. Tunnels meant digging, which meant tools and work shifts and dirt disposal. He’d studied diagrams of proper tunnel construction, back in London, but it was a long way between sketches on paper and actual, secure, properly constructed tunnels. Might there already be a miner in the camp? Or— might as well wish for the moon, while he was at it— an engineer? And if there wasn’t, could he have one imported? Somewhere, among the captured soldiers of at least six separate countries, there had to be at least one man who knew something about the art and science of excavation. Had to be. Right? Finding him, whoever he was, had to be his first priority.

Lange sounded like a real beaut. He had to go. They couldn’t hope to get anything done with a vulture like that breathing down their necks. That was also first on the priority list. Everything on the list, so far, was something that needed to be done first. What had he gotten himself into?

He fell asleep before he’d finished panicking and second-guessing himself, which was probably best for all concerned.

*.*.*.*.*.*

“Raus, raus!” shouted the guard, barging into the barracks. LeBeau, sound asleep, had his arm dangling limply over the edge of the bunk. It was too much temptation for the guard, who grabbed his wrist and yanked hard, plunging LeBeau clear off the bunk and to the floor. “Raus, cockroach! Roll call! Five minutes!”

LeBeau sat up on the ground, rubbing his sore shoulder with a scowl. If looks could kill, the guard would have been immolated on the spot, but the goon only smirked, and kicked the door open, letting in a gust of night-chilled air.

Hogan heard the commotion. Hurriedly tugging his jacket on over his untucked shirt, he strode into the room. “What’s going on?”

“Sergeant Richter delivered our wake-up call,” Kinch explained, shoving his feet into his boots.

“ _Ouais,_ ” LeBeau grumbled, retrieving his sweater. “ _And used me as the alarm clock. Filthy pig._ ”

“ _I’ve heard of a clock striking the time, but never the other way around,”_ Kinch said, with a small smile.

_“Very funny. Tomorrow_ **_you_ ** _can sleep on the outside. See how you like it.”_

Hogan’s French was adequate if not elegant; he understood the corporal well enough. He made the snap decision not to advertise that fact, at least not yet. He did wonder, in the back of his mind, how many of the men, besides, evidently, Kinchloe, were bi-lingual. Or tri-lingual; French was nice, but German would be essential. “Are you all right, Corporal…?”

“LeBeau, _mon colonel,_ ” he said politely. “Corporal Louis LeBeau. _Oui,_ I am fine. Thank you.”

“That was quite an entrance. Do the guards pull that kind of crap often?”

“Often enough,” LeBeau said, shrugging it off. “They think it is funny to be cruel.”

“I’ve always suspected that they don’t like waking up at the crack of dawn for roll call, either,” Richmond chimed in. “So they try to spread the misery as far as they can.”

“I notice that it does not spread all the way to the corner where you are sleeping,” LeBeau grumbled.

“Don’t blame _me_ ,” Richmond said. “Newkirk’s the one who insists on that bunk… and you’re the one who goes along with it.”

“Newkirk? Is that your name?” Hogan asked the tall American, knowing full well that it wouldn’t be. But it would be far friendlier to _ask_.

He smiled. “No, sir; I’m Sergeant James Kinchloe. Everyone calls me Kinch for short.”

“Nice to meet you. Which one is Newkirk?”

“None of us, _mon colonel_ ,” LeBeau explained grimly. “He is—”

“Raus! Raus, everybody out! Roll call! Schnell!”

 _Their timing is exquisite. For Pete’s sake._ ”All right, Sergeant, we’re coming,” Hogan said.

The Germans counted the prisoners, then counted them a second time just to be certain, and then spent some time sneering at the state of their ragged uniforms, contrasting them—unfavorably—with their own pristine jackets and shiny buttons, and speculating on the possible reasons that Allied soldiers might have for dressing like vagabonds and living in filth. None of the reasons were especially complimentary, and, it need hardly be said, the Germans inexplicably failed to consider the fact that laundry soap was a rarity in the camp and that sewing kits were classified as weapons and confiscated, lest the prisoners attempt to tailor civilian clothes in which to escape.

The men were too wise, or possibly just too tired, to be goaded, and they stared straight ahead throughout, waiting it out in furious silence, but when they were finally allowed back into the barracks, it was evident that the guards’ little comedy routine had not improved anyone’s mood.

Forrest glanced at his watch. “Er, Colonel Hogan? We’ll be heading over to breakfast in about five minutes. Did you want to eat with us, or, well, I don’t think there’s an officer’s mess…”

“I _had_ thought of ordering room service,” Hogan said, with an I’m-just-kidding smile. “But maybe another time. Lead the way; I’m so hungry I could eat my hat.”

“You’d be better off if you did,” Kinch said. “The hat might have some nutritional value. Possibly even some flavor.”

“Don’t worry about being hungry, though,” Richmond said. “One bite of gruel and you’ll never want to eat again.”

“One bite of that gruel and you will not want to _live_ ,” LeBeau corrected. “It is swill.”

“Two bites of the gruel, and you might _not_ live,” Richmond said cheerfully.

“That good, huh?” Hogan shook his head. “One more thing for the to-do list. ‘Improve the rations.’ Waffles and syrup are probably not going to happen, but we’ve got to be able to do better than suicide cereal.”

Nobody laughed; they weren’t quite sure yet if their new officer was being deliberately humorous or simply naïve. LeBeau just smiled and nodded, obviously skeptical but trying not to show it, and he fell into his place in line without another word. Hogan didn’t press the matter, just waited until all the men were in line and followed them to the mess hall. He was, somehow, completely unsurprised to find that the men had not been exaggerating; the thin gruel looked and tasted like rancid wallpaper paste. He was even less surprised to see that every man wolfed it down anyway, polishing the bowls clean with chunks of coarse bread.

Yes. Improving the rations had just become yet another first priority.

A week later, he had ‘acquired’ a small notebook, which he was rapidly filling with terse biographical sketches on each man in camp. Mostly, of course, they were ordinary men doing their best in difficult circumstances. There were several he was determined to see the backs of as soon as possible, a couple who seemed to have some potential, and some he couldn’t seem to get a handle on, just yet.

Several of the latter, as it happened, were quite close to hand. Something was casting a pall over the men in Barracks Two. Either his own presence, (or that of his eagles,) was to blame for the stilted, tense atmosphere, or there was something more going on beneath the surface. And maybe it was just his ego talking, but he didn’t think he was _that_ much of a social dud.

*.*.*.*.*.*

LeBeau glared into his bowl. “This is revolting,” he muttered.

“You say that every morning,” said Richmond.

“And I _mean_ it every morning,” LeBeau said. “We need Newkirk back. Before we all starve.”

“Don’t hold your breath,” Kinch said bluntly. “Lange wants this place to stay quiet, at least until our new officer pal gets into the routine of life here in the Goering Guesthouse. Newkirk’s a lot of things, but quiet isn’t one of them.”

“I’m afraid he’s right,” Forrest said. “I asked Schultz if he’d heard anything about when they might be releasing him.”

“Pfft! Schultz? Don’t tell me,” LeBeau said, rolling his eyes. “He knew nothing?”

“You’re not pronouncing it right,” Richmond said, trying to lighten the mood. “It’s more like ‘nusss-zink.’”

“It is no joking matter,” LeBeau snapped. “He will be sick again if they do not let him out soon.”

“He’s tough. He’ll manage,” Forrest said for the umpteenth time. “Schultz said that there’s no word on a release date, but that he’s doing well enough. Hang on to that.”

LeBeau scowled at his breakfast again. “Schultz. The great medical authority. _C’est formidable_. This officer has brought nothing but bad luck. Lange is beside himself, Newkirk is now _Le Corporal de Monte-Cristo_ , and we cannot proceed with the tunnel.”

“But aside from that, everything’s hunky-dory,” Kinch said. “Look, Louis, I know you’re worried about Newkirk, but he’ll be okay. He always is. And as for the tunnel… actually, I wanted to talk to you guys about that. He seems all right. The Colonel, I mean. Don’t you think we can let him in on the secret? That way we can get back to work.”

“I don’t know,” Richmond said. “He does seem a decent fellow, but so did Weston, and we all know how _that_ turned out. He’s only been here a few days. I’m not sure I care to risk my neck on a week’s acquaintance.”

The specter of Weston, as always, led to a moment of pained, awkward silence. Kinch, the relative newcomer, rallied first. “You only knew me for two weeks before I was in the club,” he pointed out. “We’re going to have to trust him eventually.”

“‘Eventually’ and ‘now’ are two very different things,” said LeBeau darkly. “I grant you, he seems nice enough, on the surface, but he has done nothing but go from barracks to barracks collecting dossiers on the men.”

“Any CO would do that,” Kinch argued. “If he’s going to be running this zoo, he’s going to have to know what he’s got in the cages.”

“Charming metaphor, that,” Richmond said. “A bit too on the nose for my tastes, but charming nonetheless. You’re right; it _is_ what a good CO would do. But it’s also what an informant would do. I still say we give it a few more days.”

Forrest leaned forward, his brow furrowed in thought. “While we’re waiting, what if we get him to do us a bit of a favor? If he’s on the level, he’d be happy to do it. If he’s a grass, he’d jump at the chance to get in our good books. And, either way, we get something that _we_ want out of the deal.”

Kinch lifted a quizzical eyebrow. “What did you have in mind?”

LeBeau had known him longer, and was therefore a bit quicker to read Forrest’s mind. A smile like a sunrise lit up his face. “Newkirk, _n’est-ce pas_? Lange will never listen to us. But _le colonel_ might have a chance.”

Forrest turned a hand palm-up with a tiny smile. “If he won’t do it, or if he _can’t_ do it, we’re no worse off than we are now. And if he does manage to get our favorite scoundrel out of solitary… well, among other things, we just might have something for breakfast that would be worth waking up for.”

“And we just might have a CO worth following,” Kinch finished the thought.

Richmond bit his lip, thinking, then nodded. “I’ll go for that. Maybe even mention the black marketing; explain that he’s our scrounger and we need him. Show a little vulnerability and see if it comes back to bite us. Even if it does, it barely even counts as a secret; we’re already paying off half the guards.”

“Using the money that Pierre wins from them at poker in the first place,” LeBeau said, the grin still crooking the corners of his mouth.

“Precisely,” Forrest said. “As Newkirk would put it, it’s time to ante up, wouldn’t you say?”

*.*.*.*.*.*

Author’s note: _Le Corporal de Monte-Cristo_ , is, of course, a reference to the Dumas novel, about a man locked up in a bleak prison on false espionage charges, who escapes and proceeds to wreak vengeance on those who wronged him. Apparently, it’s based on a true story. Looking back, between this reference and the ‘Three Musketeers’ jokes a few chapters back, it seems that LeBeau is fond of Dumas. 


	19. Chapter 19

Hogan had not missed the quick looks being traded amongst what he had pegged as being the ringleaders of the barracks over breakfast, and he considered them all once more. Forrest, the barracks chief, had a quiet, reserved competence about him that Hogan liked quite a bit. Kinch shared that air of calm, proficient intelligence. The more gregarious Richmond had, paradoxically, made less of an impression on Hogan than the watchful, ‘still waters run deep’ American, but he was obviously Forrest’s right hand, so there had to be something there. So much for the sergeants. The little French corporal was one of the men Hogan was having the most difficulty getting a read on; his constant state of tense anger was doing far too good a job of masking anything else that might be going on beneath that tattered beret. Something was up, and he wanted to know what it was.

He ran into Wilson as they left the mess hall after what Hogan could still hardly believe he was supposed to call breakfast. “Good morning, doc,” he said cheerfully.

“Hello, Colonel,” Wilson said. “Not sure what’s good about it, myself, but one can always hope.”

“Ah, Wilson, you’re a ray of light in my dismal life,” Hogan said.

Wilson sighed. “Sorry, sir. I’ve got what looks like the beginnings of a flu outbreak over in Barracks Six. It’s put a bit of a damper on my sunny disposition.”

“Flu? That sounds serious. Is there anything you need?”

“Ha. Better question would be, is there anything I _have_. And the answer’s no. I was actually hoping I could borrow your chef. We’ve organized some vegetables, and if he could make a few pots of broth, it would be a help.”

“My what?”

“Your chef. LeBeau,” Wilson said.

_He’s a chef? Interesting._ “I’ll let him know. I’m sure he’d be happy to help,” Hogan said. “Make a list of anything else you want, and I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thanks,” Wilson said, trying not to let himself expect too much. “I appreciate that. We can’t lose any more men. We just _can’t_.”

Hogan nodded. “I understand. Actually… speaking of which. The man who died. You said he’d sustained a head injury. What happened? An escape attempt gone bad, or did the Krauts work him over here in camp?”

“Neither,” said Wilson, his face hardening. “The way I heard it, there was some sort of fight in the barracks. Blunt force trauma, right here.” Wilson pointed to the spot. “His name was Browning. Either he got punched, fell back and hit his head on something hard, or the other guy clocked him from behind with something hard. I’ve heard both versions.”

“Wait,” Hogan said. “You’re telling me that he was killed by one of _ours?_ ”

“‘Fraid so, sir,” Wilson said. “I’m getting all of this second or third-hand, and the story keeps changing in the telling, so I couldn’t say with any certainty if it was accidental, or heat of the moment, or what.”

“It doesn’t matter. Murder is murder,” Hogan said, visceral disgust in his voice.

“No argument there,” Wilson said. “Look, sir, I have to get back to my patients. Send LeBeau over when you can, please?”

“Of course,” Hogan said, still disturbed. He opened the door of Barracks Two, and was only mildly surprised to see the four breakfast-time plotters ranged by the door of his office, all showing the mixture of hope, embarrassment, and apprehension that usually meant a request was on the way.

And it was the corporal who took the initiative. “Your pardon, _mon Colonel_ ,” he said politely. “May we have a moment of your time?”

“My calendar’s pretty clear,” Hogan said. “Come in. What can I do for you gents?”

Forrest smiled, a bit shyly. “We did want to ask you a favor, sir. It’s about Corporal Newkirk.”

Hogan’s mind spun through a list of names, came up blank. “Newkirk…? Sorry; which one is he? I’ve met a lot of men this week.”

“You have not yet met him; he is in the cooler,” LeBeau said. “Please, sir. He has been there for a long time. Could you speak with the Kommandant on his behalf?”

Hogan snapped his fingers. “Right! Now I remember. You said he’s the one who usually takes the bunk by the door.”

“That’s right, Colonel,” Kinch agreed. “Worst bunk in the place. Right between the door and the window, so it’s drafty on both ends, _and_ it’s the one the Krauts bang on every morning.”

“So why does he insist on sleeping there?”

“ _Because_ it is the worst one,” LeBeau said. “He says he just likes having something to complain about, but it is really because he will not let someone else sleep there and be miserable.”

“But you share it with him?”

“Someone has to, Colonel,” Kinch said. “And Louis likes having things to complain about, too.”

“ _That is_ _slander,_ and I resent it _,_ ” LeBeau flared. “This is not about me!”

“Easy, LeBeau,” Forrest said. “Not the time for an argument.”

Richmond looked at Hogan. “Newkirk’s our friend, and he’s apparently being held at the Kommandant’s pleasure,” he said simply. “None of the guards will tell us anything definite, and we’re all worried about him. We were hoping that, as the new senior POW, you might at least be able to get in to see if he’s all right.”

Hogan considered the question. “I can probably convince Lange to let me see him,” he said slowly. “But that isn’t really what you came here to ask, is it?”

LeBeau shook his head. “No, sir. Not really. I… we hoped that you could try to have him released. Lange will not even say how long he intends to keep Pierre locked up in there. Please, _Colonel_. He is not a bad person.”

“Of course not,” Hogan said. “He’s one of ours, after all. I’ll see what I can do. Oh, and LeBeau—Sergeant Wilson asked me to let you know that he needs your help. Could you whip up some soup for his patients? He says he’s got vegetables.”

“ _Oui, mon Colonel_ ,” LeBeau said promptly, trying to fight off the smile that wanted to spread across his face and not having much luck. It transformed him. “It would be my privilege.”

In fact, unguarded happiness flickered across all four faces, and it was good to see. Hogan wondered if the chilly tension he’d noticed in the barracks had anything to do with his own presence, after all. If the primary difficulty was worry for an absent friend, springing this Newkirk fellow just might be the shortcut to raising the emotional temperature a few degrees. In any case, it couldn’t hurt. How much trouble could one corporal more or less really be?

Accordingly, late the next afternoon, Hogan found himself being escorted into the cooler. He suppressed a shiver that was only partially due to the icy air as he walked past the rows of cells. Most, he was relieved to note, were open and empty. At least one had a set of shackles dangling from a ring driven into the wall, and he suppressed another shudder that had nothing whatsoever to do with the cold.

They went down a flight of stairs. Impossibly, the air got colder. The guard, with a nasty expression somewhere between a sneer and a smirk, opened the tiny observation panel on one of the heavy steel doors and waved Hogan over.

Gray. The cell was entirely gray. The walls were gray, the dirty straw on the cement floor was gray, the filthy mattress and ragged blanket were gray, even the dim light, somehow, managed to be gray. Everything was gray. That included the wraithlike man lying on the cot; his uniform, once blue, had long since faded, and his skin, stretched taut and dull over too-prominent bones, was the same sickly shade. Only his eyes, sunken and shadowed through they were, retained any color at all.

Hogan frowned at the guard. “This is inhuman. How long does the Kommandant plan on keeping him locked up in here? When is he going to let him out?”

Before the guard, Richter, could say anything, Newkirk answered. His voice was strident, amused, and had an accent so thick Hogan could have cut it with a knife. “Well, sir, they tell me the war has to end _sometime_. Sooner or later, I’m sure I’ll be liberated.”

Hogan shook his head. “I wasn’t talking about the camp; I was talking about the cooler.”

“Yes, sir. So was I, sir,” Newkirk said, straight-faced, and got up from the cot to peer through the Judas hole with undisguised interest.

“I see,” Hogan said, suddenly interested in whatever was going on behind those bright eyes. Whoever or whatever this man was, he was indubitably awake and alive. “Glad you’re keeping a positive attitude. How long have they been keeping you in there?”

“Yes, sir,” Newkirk said. “I do try to keep my spirits up. Been in since the tail end of ‘39, sir.”

“No, not the camp; I was still talking about the cooler…” Hogan began, then, recognizing the trap he’d fallen into, rolled his eyes. “Yes, yes, I know. So were you. Seriously, though. How long?”

“It’s not that bad, sir. Only been a couple of weeks so far. I’ve had worse. Thanks for asking, though, sir.”

“I’ll try to get you out as soon as I can,” Hogan promised. “You say you’ve been here since ‘39?”

“Afraid so, sir,” Newkirk said. “Lucky in cards, unlucky in bombing raids, or something along those lines.”

Hogan nodded. “Well, I know where to go if I need any details on camp history.”

“Any time you please, Colonel! Happy to tell you anything you’d like to know. Makes for fascinating listening,” Newkirk said cheerfully. “Some days we eat cabbage soup and mill about, trying to keep warm. Other days, sir, we get _potato_ soup and mill about, trying to keep warm.”

Hogan caught the glitter in those green eyes. He was being measured, he could tell. The wry jokes were a test— perhaps Hogan would snap out a quick reprimand, in which case he was a martinet, and would be treated with scrupulous military courtesy and kept at arms’ length. Perhaps Hogan would simply fail to notice that he was being teased, in which case he was a dullard, and would be sirred, saluted, and sidelined. Hogan might choose to ignore the humor and go on with the conversation, colonel to corporal… but if he did, corporal to colonel was all he would ever get in return. These were extraordinary circumstances, and simple military courtesy was not going to suffice. He chose, therefore, to grin at the Englishman. And to joke back.

“Sheer poetry,” he said, mock-admiringly. “How do you ever stand the excitement of it all?”

Newkirk’s mouth quirked up at the corners. “Clean living, sir. No drink, no rich foods, no birds, no gallivanting.”

“Oh, is that the secret?” Hogan asked.

“No, sir. It’s just that, when we all think about having to live without those sorts of things, a little hypothermia and malnutrition don’t seem so ruddy bad by comparison.” His voice was still as respectful as you could ask, but the mischievous glitter in his eyes was getting brighter by the moment, a stark contrast to his wasted body and filthy condition.

_He’s running on sheer willpower,_ Hogan thought. _Two weeks in here, more than two years out there… he’s holding himself together with safety pins and stubbornness, and he should have collapsed a long time ago._

_I want this one!_

“I’ll keep that in mind. I must say, Corporal, you’ve got quite a way with words,” Hogan said.

“So I’m told,” Newkirk said. “That’s what _usually_ lands me in here.”

“Usually?” Hogan frowned, no longer amused. “The Krauts toss you in here often?”

He shrugged. “Often enough, sir,” he said. “No one ever said being a prisoner was all fun and games.”

“Well, don’t get too comfortable. I’m going to get you out of here,” Hogan promised.

Newkirk smiled. “Thank you, sir,” he said. “There are a lot of things to be said for having a private room, but, to be quite honest, sir, if the room in question is like this one, most of those things would get a bloke’s mouth washed out with soap.”

“You don’t need to tell me the details. I can imagine,” Hogan said. “I’ll settle up at the front desk, and send the bellhop down for your luggage as soon as I can.”

The guard, apparently a bit miffed at having been left out of the conversation, broke back in. “ **Nein**. The Englander stays until the Kommandant says otherwise.”

“I know,” Hogan said. “I’ll talk to him.”

“Yes. But perhaps the Englander would rather stay here,” Richter said, still smirking.

“What? Why on earth would he want that?”

“Ah. Only because the Kommandant puts him here to keep him safe,” the guard said. “We are very kind, we Germans. We did not wish to see him hurt.”

Newkirk rolled his eyes expressively. “Oh, quite right, sir. The Kommandant’s been like a father to me.” It was true enough. If anything, that bloody sadistic bastard Lange was better than his father. Because at least he had never expected any sort of kindness from a Nazi.

Hogan shook his head to clear it. “That’s… touching. Why would they be worried that you’d get hurt?”

“The other prisoners… they were very upset after poor Browning died,” Richter explained. “Very upset. They wanted to, as you say, ‘handle’ the situation themselves. Revenge is an ugly thing, is it not, Colonel?”

Hogan stared at him, then at Newkirk. “ _You?_ You’re the one who killed Browning?”

Newkirk looked away. “Yes, sir. It’s my fault, what happened to him. I told Kinch, I _told_ him, everyone needed to just clear out and leave me be. But he wouldn’t listen. Browning… he should never have been there in the first place. He came after me and he died for it.” He had forgotten Richter, forgotten the ruse. Forgotten Hogan, to be quite honest. He was, again, telling the truth as he saw it. Maybe he hadn’t physically struck the blow, but, so far as he was concerned, it was still his fault that Browning was dead.

“I see,” Hogan said coldly, and made a snap decision. “Well, Corporal, I’m glad you told me.”

“Sir?”

“I’ll see what I can do about your situation,” Hogan said. He meant it. Handling this sordid mess was yet another top priority. First impressions be damned; the last thing he needed was a cold-blooded killer in his camp. Either he’d arrange to smuggle the sonovabitch back to London to stand charges, or he could sit in the cooler until he rotted; Hogan didn’t much care which.


	20. Chapter 20

If ever there was a man who looked as though he had just made a lifelong friend, Kinch thought as the colonel stalked into his room and slammed the door behind him, Hogan wasn’t it. Somehow, he suspected, the colonel was not about to gather them in his office with a cheerful smile and the news that Newkirk would be free any time soon. ‘Cheerful’ was decidedly not the word he would have used to describe his demeanor, in fact, not when descriptors like ‘infuriated’ or ‘irate’ were there for the choosing. Kinch sighed. There were several possible reasons that Hogan might be looking as though he was seriously considering the merits of biting steel nails in two. Either Lange had acted like Lange usually did, or Newkirk had acted, well… like Newkirk usually did. Frankly, Kinch wasn’t sure which of the two would be worse in the long run.

And just to put the cherry on top, LeBeau, who never had any compunctions about rushing in where angels feared to tread if he deemed it necessary, squared his shoulders and rapped on the door, presumably gearing himself up to act like _LeBeau_ usually did.

“Enter,” Hogan snapped.

Kinch spent a millisecond or two trying to convince himself that LeBeau’s apparent need to get his head bitten off was entirely his own affair, and therefore not something that required Kinch’s assistance or supervision. He was, however, unable to come up with any really compelling arguments to support that position. He hadn’t expected to. He stood up and followed the Frenchman into Hogan’s office without a word.

He wasn’t particularly surprised when Forrest and Richmond flanked him. They weren’t too good at coming up with self-preservatory justifications, either. Really, looking at the five of them, it was a miracle that any of them had made it this long.

Hogan was sitting at his desk, positively exuding all the warmth and good fellowship of a loaded handgun, or possibly a bear with a rear end full of burrs. “Corporal LeBeau. Sergeant Forrest, Sergeant Richmond. Sergeant Kinchloe. Was there something you wanted?”

“Yes, _mon Colonel_ ,” LeBeau said, eyes steely and determined. “May I ask, sir, if you were able to see Pierre?”

“I saw him,” Hogan said. His tone might easily have discouraged a less motivated querent from continuing the conversation.

It had no perceivable effect on LeBeau. “And, sir, do you know when he might be released?”

Hogan’s lips stretched into something that wasn’t actually a smile. “Well. As he put it himself, the war has to end _eventually_. For now, though, I think he’s right where he ought to be. If that was all?”

Forrest put a quelling hand on LeBeau’s shoulder. The unspoken implication was that the other hand could easily be clapped over his mouth. “I see, sir,” Forrest said. “We do appreciate that you tried. Sir.”

“Yeah, I know how anxious you all were to have him back in the barracks,” Hogan said, with some sarcasm. He didn’t especially appreciate being played for a fool, and he was more than a little disgusted that Forrest had allowed discipline to descend into eye-for-an-eye mob justice. “But I think the current arrangement will do nicely, at least for the time being. It just doesn’t seem necessary, or prudent, to alter anything.”

Richmond blinked. “Prudent, sir?”

“Prudent,” Hogan agreed. “Corporal Newkirk was kind enough to fill me in on a few details that you gentlemen inexplicably failed to mention. About Browning, and the particulars of his death, among others.”

Forrest looked as though he’d been hit with a board. “Newkirk told you about that?” 

“He did.”

“What, all of it? In front of the _guard?_ ”

“He was entirely forthcoming about the whole sordid affair,” Hogan said. “Frankly, I appreciated the honesty; I sure haven’t gotten much of it from anyone else. He’s an utter disgrace to the uniform in every other respect, but he’s the only one who didn’t try to hoodwink me. I realize I haven’t been here that long, but as the ranking officer, I feel I have the right to expect at _least_ that courtesy from my men.”

Kinch saw LeBeau stiffen; he wasn’t sure how much of that was a reaction to the harsh reprimand and how much was pure offense on Newkirk’s behalf, but he cut in before his friend could dig himself any deeper.

“I apologize, Colonel,” he said quietly. “On behalf of all of us in Barracks Two. I hope you can understand, though, that we’ve been trying to keep the whole thing a very closely guarded secret. For everyone’s sake.”

Hogan frowned. “Exactly so, Sergeant. For everyone’s sake. Like it or not, gentlemen, I’m in command here. That means I need to be on top of each and every aspect of what’s going on in this camp. No more secrets, no more plots, no more conspiracies, no more lies. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, sir,” Forrest said.

“I’ll take care of the Newkirk matter,” Hogan promised. “But we handle it my way. It’s bad enough the Krauts know what you were planning.”

“They know?” Richmond had turned a delicate pea-green. He wasn’t sure how much more bad news he could take in the course of a single dressing-down.

“Of course they know. Newkirk must have spilled his guts to save his neck,” Hogan said, with undisguised contempt in his voice.

LeBeau shook his head. “No. He would not. Not he. No matter what they did to him.”

“He did. The guard gave me the broad outlines, and let Newkirk fill in the finer details,” Hogan said doggedly. “If anything, he seemed rather amused by the whole thing.”

“Impossible. They can’t have known, sir,” Forrest said. “If Newkirk had told them about the tunnel, if they even _suspected_ anything of the sort, they’d have swarmed in here to fill it in and lock the rest of us away, long since.”

Hogan opened his mouth to retort, then drew back. “Tunnel? What tunnel?”

LeBeau shot Forrest a truly poisonous look. “ _Damn it, Forrest! I told you he would never have said anything! The oldest trick in the book, and you—_ ”

Hogan’s eyes narrowed. “All right, I’ve tried being patient, but now I want some straight answers. What in blazes is going on here?”

Kinch stepped in again, cutting LeBeau off before he could warm to his subject. Being the levelheaded one was no fun at all. “Yes, sir. We’ve been digging an escape tunnel,” he said. “No offense intended, sir, but we were a bit hesitant to involve you. As you said yourself, you haven’t been here all that long.”

Hogan’s whole face lit up with interest. “How far have you gotten?”

Richmond sighed. The game was well and truly up. “Not terribly far, I’m afraid. We’ve had some difficulties disposing of the dirt, for one thing, and, for another, several weeks back, there was a partial collapse.”

“Oh. I see,” Hogan said, disappointed. “How much of it was lost?”

“Not all that much, actually,” Kinch said. “Six or seven yards, at most. The damage has already been repaired. And we’ve been more careful with the props since. I can’t say that anything about that awful night was _lucky_ , God knows, but just as regards the tunnel itself, things might have been worse.”

“Why don’t you show me?” Hogan asked. “The cat’s already out of the bag, after all.”

“Of course,” Forrest said after a moment. The Newkirk question, it appeared, had been tabled for the time being. He supposed that a ‘not now’ was better than the ‘absolutely not’ with which they had begun the conversation, and he could understand why an escape tunnel would be of greater interest to the colonel than one wayward corporal, but it was still a bit discouraging. “It’s over here, sir.”

Richmond pulled the floorboards away from the tunnel entrance. “It’s about ten feet down, then a straight shot towards the western fence. We’re planning to emerge in the forest, where we’ll have a bit of cover, you see.”

“Yes, that makes sense,” Hogan said. “Is this tunnel… er… structurally safe?”

“Not in the least,” LeBeau said bluntly. “Sir.”

“Great. Is there a ladder?”

“No. We’ve been using any wood we can get our hands on to shore up the walls; we just plain haven’t had any to spare for building ladders. There’s a rope you can use to climb down,” Kinch said. “I’ll tie it to the leg of the bunk.”

“All right,” Hogan said. “Let’s see what’s what.”

One by one, they shinnied down the rope, and began crawling through the tunnel. It was about a yard wide, and perhaps a bit less than a yard high, so ‘crawling’ was very much the operative word. As Kinch had explained, it was propped with a motley assortment of scraps cadged from every corner of the camp; slats from the bunks, stove wood, and anything else that they could find.

The cramped, airless space was not improved by the eerie shadows cast by the sole light source: an improvised miner’s lamp—a milk can containing a stumpy candle—which Hogan had strapped to his head. The frequent showers of fine dust that cascaded from the roof of the tunnel weren’t much of a selling point, either. In fact, the tunnel had essentially no good features except the simple fact of its existence. Whatever angel watched over fools and prisoners had to have been working double shifts, because the surprise was not that there had been a cave-in, but that any of it had stayed intact.

It was painfully obvious that these men had no engineering experience whatsoever. They had shored up the walls as best they could, but that wasn’t saying much. Their equipment consisted of one entrenching tool, several crude trowels made from tin cans hafted to bits of broomstick, a pick that had probably started life as a tire iron, a few buckets, and sheer determination.

He was impressed by their grit, if not their excavation techniques, but he was more than a little relieved when they returned to the barracks. The plywood huts were no bargain, but there was at least a fifty percent chance that they’d stay upright.

“Well, considering what you had to work with, you men have done a great job. I mean that,” Hogan began. “But if you’re willing to let me help you a little, I think we can make it a lot more comfortable. And probably a bit safer, too.”

LeBeau had pulled off his beret and was brushing the dust out of it. He flicked a glance at his friends, then nodded minutely. Kinch, who was coiling up their rope, did, too. Richmond replaced the last of the floorboards over the tunnel entrance and turned a hand palm-up in a ‘why not’ sort of gesture.

Forrest made it unanimous. “I think that could only be a very good thing all around, Colonel. The sooner we finish the tunnel, the sooner we can _use_ it to get out of this wretched place.”

Hogan nodded noncommittally. Now was not the time to ask for volunteers to remain in camp. “Yes. Escape is a prisoner’s first duty. Look, I’m going to level with you guys. I want us to think _bigger_ than just getting a few people out of here. Escaping in twos and threes is all well and good, but what if we could get out twenty, fifty, a _hundred_ guys at once?”

Judging by the looks on their faces, that hadn’t sounded nearly as sane as he might have liked. “I know it sounds a bit farfetched,” he said. “But think about it. If the tunnel was shored up and enlarged… if we scrounged up a few forged papers, some civilian clothing… the men could stroll right out of Germany without turning a hair. And while it would be a nuisance for Lange to lose five or six men, losing a hundred would be a catastrophe!”

Kinch was the first to speak. “I’ll admit I like the sound of that, Colonel. But the question isn’t whether we’d _like_ it. The question is how could we _do_ it?”

Hogan grinned. “Leave that to me. I’m arranging for Santa Claus to come a bit early this year. He’ll bring us the tools we need to pull it off. All we need to do is find the right men to use them.”

“I am not bad with a needle,” LeBeau volunteered. “But Newkirk is better still. If you wish someone to make your civilian clothing, _mon Colonel_ , he is the one you need.”

Hogan ignored that. “There’s a man over in Barracks Four who was a tailor in civilian life. He’s Russian, but his English is good enough that it shouldn’t be a problem. That’s who I’d like to put in charge of our little atelier. If you can sew, I’m sure he’d appreciate the help.”

“Oh! Yes, I know who you mean,” Forrest said. “He’s a good chap.”

“Seemed like it,” Hogan said. “I’ve also located two men with mining experience. One’s in Barracks Three, and the other is in Seven. I’m going to have them take a look at your tunnel, and see what they think. If worst comes to worst and we have to start over, at least we can use it to dispose of the dirt.”

Steam was not quite coming out of LeBeau’s ears, but he wasn’t far from it. “ _Oui, mon colonel,_ ” he said. “But sir. What about Newkirk?”

“Newkirk is no longer your concern,” Hogan snapped, tired of being nagged. Here he was trying to organize an intelligence and sabotage unit, trying to do something _important_ for the war effort, and the men’s constant harping on a single bad apple was rasping on his last nerve. “Forget about him! I’ll take care of it; _you_ need to focus on what’s at stake here! Get your head in the game, Corporal!”

LeBeau snapped to attention. “Yes, sir,” he said. His emotional temperature plummeted, going from heated frustration to icy contempt in the blink of an eye. Plainly, this new officer did not care what became of them, and in all probability could not be coaxed into caring; very well. He would go and check on Newkirk himself.

Getting _into_ the cooler was no difficult task, after all.

*.*.*.*.*.*

Author’s note: Sergeant Vladimir Minsk, the pilot-only tailor, did seem like rather a decent fellow in the brief couple of scenes in which he appeared. As for LeBeau’s sewing abilities, according to the show, sometimes he was quite good, and sometimes he couldn’t manage to sew on a button… and it is an undeniable fact that his sweater always had tears. I’m going to make the unilateral decision that he was good, if not great, and leave it at that.

Hogan is being rather awful here, but in his defense, he’s _completely_ overwhelmed by everything he’s trying to do, he’s feeling duped and betrayed by men who, so far as he can tell, are little short of vigilantes, and he’s still second-guessing himself at a rate of about six times a minute. This on top of the normal pressures of being a POW, a CO, and a spy. He’ll get better. I promise.


	21. Chapter 21

“Forrest, a moment?”

“Of course, LeBeau. What’s the matter?”

“I am going to skip morning roll call,” LeBeau announced.

“What? Why? The Jerries will go absolutely spare!”

“I know. I will ‘oversleep,’ and when they find me still in bed, they will put me in the cooler for a few days. Probably not more than a week.”

Forrest studied him for a moment. “Well, normally I’d say to give Newkirk my regards—”

LeBeau interrupted him. “ _Ouais,_ I will.”

“—But not this time. I can’t recommend this. Not yet, at any rate,” Forrest said. “Yes, the Jerries will be a bit sore. But have you considered that the colonel likely will be, as well? How do you plan on explaining this to him?”

“Explain?” LeBeau shrugged. “I overslept. What is there to explain?”

“Oh, pull the other one,” Forrest said. “The man’s not stupid; he’ll know perfectly well that you did it in order to check on Newkirk. And, seeing as how he specifically ordered you to do nothing of the sort, that will not go over well.”

“What do I care?” LeBeau said. “Let him be as angry with me as he likes. He has already decided that Pierre is not worth saving. And I have already decided that this Hogan is an utter—”

“LeBeau… be fair. He’s got some good ideas,” Forrest said. “I didn’t know there were miners in camp. Did you?

“No. I did not. Nor did I know that you would be so ready to abandon our friend the moment an officer snapped his fingers.” LeBeau did not tack on any of the epithets that would have expressed his opinion of such an attitude more succinctly. But then, given his expression and tone of voice, he didn’t really have to.

“I’m not abandoning anyone, LeBeau, and I don’t ruddy appreciate the implication that I would, either,” Forrest said, his tone equally eloquent.

“Well, I did not appreciate being told that Pierre is no longer my concern. That is not for this Hogan to decide, rank or no rank!” LeBeau shook his head. “Enough. Newkirk is my friend. I am going to the cooler, and I will make sure he knows he is not alone. If that means _le colonel_ casts me aside as well, so be it.”

“LeBeau, you’re acting as though he’s never seen the inside of a cell. He’ll be released, just like always, probably in another couple of weeks at most. At which point he’ll be back down in the tunnel with us, just like always, except _this_ time we’ll have someone there who knows what they’re doing, and no more mistakes, damn it all! There is nothing to be gained by making an enemy of the CO, and, frankly, I’d say we _all_ have a great deal to lose! _Including_ Newkirk!”

“Yes! We have a very great deal to lose! Including Newkirk!” LeBeau took a deep, ragged breath. “You heard the colonel. Pierre is ‘a disgrace to the uniform?’ He is ‘right where he ought to be?’ He has no intention of getting Newkirk released. He will have him transferred, or leave him to rot in the cooler, where he can continue to crucify himself over an accident none of us caused and could not have prevented. I will not let this happen, do you hear me? I will not!”

“An accident? What accident would that be?”

Both men spun about, identical looks of shock on their faces. Hogan was leaning casually against a bunk, his arms folded casually across his chest. The only thing about him that was _not_ casual was the steely do-or-die look in his eyes.

“How long… Did you… What did… oh, God,” Forrest said.

“How long have I been standing here? Five minutes or so. Did I, what? Did I hear your little strategy session? Yes, I did. Interesting stuff. You know, I’m almost sure I remember telling you gents that I don’t like being left in the dark, and I especially don’t like being blindsided by my own men,” Hogan said. “Now answer the question. What’s going on here? What’s this accident you’re talking about?”

“Browning,” LeBeau said. “We are talking about the accident that killed him. And which will kill Newkirk if something is not done soon.”

Hogan’s voice, impossibly, hardened even more. “Newkirk. Suddenly I’m beginning to suspect that the corporal wasn’t being nearly as forthcoming as I thought. Talk. Now!”

Forrest sighed. “If you recall, sir, we mentioned that several weeks back, there was a partial collapse? A few men were trapped in it. Newkirk was all but buried alive, and LeBeau, here, damned near suffocated.”

“And Browning?”

“Rockfall,” Forrest said. “You’ve seen the tunnel. You know how unstable it is. There were lives at stake, and we opted for speed over safety; I still don’t know if it was the right call. We needed to move a great deal of dirt very quickly, and that triggered a few secondary collapses. Browning was caught in one of them. Saying that he had been in a fight was the only cover story we could come up with on the spot.”

“Wait a minute. Even if that was the story you told the Krauts, you were describing an accidental death. Manslaughter at most. So why the hell would he tell me he’d outright murdered Browning?”

LeBeau shrugged. “Did he? Or did he say he was to blame?”

Hogan narrowed his eyes. That sounded like semantics. He suspected that it wasn’t. “If it was a tunnel collapse, why would he be blaming himself, either way?”

“Probably because Newkirk is under the impression that the sun wouldn’t rise in the morning if he didn’t tell it to,” said Forrest. “Browning got hurt trying to help with the rescue, Newkirk was the one who needed help, therefore it’s entirely his fault that the tunnel caved in and Browning got in the way of a falling rock. QED.”

LeBeau scowled. “ _Oui._ He is my friend, but there are times when it would be a great pleasure to beat some sense into his stubborn head.”

“I see,” Hogan said slowly, replaying a number of comments in his head. _I told Kinch to leave me. It’s my fault. He came after me and died for it._ They sounded a lot different, this time around. He frowned. “And the reason the guard told me that you all wanted to kill him?”

“Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time,” Forrest said. “A bit of reverse psychology, you see? We were trying to convince Lange that we’d make him suffer more in here with us than he would in the cooler. And it _worked_ , too, at least at first.”

Hogan lifted an eyebrow. “At first?”

“Until Lange heard that an officer was coming and became worried that you would think the worse of him if we were to execute a fellow prisoner under his very nose,” LeBeau said. “That is a privilege he reserves for himself.”

“I’m not sure how much worse I could think of our esteemed Kommandant, but I can see his point,” Hogan said. “The Red Cross might have had something to say about it, too.”

“Pfft. They have done nothing since I have been here; why would they start now?” LeBeau said.

Not entirely true, but this didn’t seem like the time to explain about Stephens and his complex association with the Red Cross. “So,” Hogan said, still putting all the pieces together. “Browning was hurt when the tunnel went bum. You all claimed that Newkirk killed him because you were trying to prevent the Krauts from finding the tunnel… and then you all threatened to kill _Newkirk_ because you were trying to prevent the Krauts from tossing him in the cooler. This is some crazy war we’ve got here. I never knew that being a POW was so _complicated_.”

“For what it’s worth, sir,” Forrest said. “Neither did I.”

Hogan shook his head. “Well, one thing is simple enough. I need to mosey on down to the Kommandant’s office and sweet-talk him into springing Newkirk. Any corporal who can cause _this_ much trouble when he’s not even _here_ is too valuable to leave in solitary.”

LeBeau beamed. “Thank you, _mon Colonel_ ,” he said.

“Yeah, don’t thank me yet. Finagling Lange isn’t going to be any picnic; just going on my first impressions of the guy, he’s got this strange aversion to doing anything that would make a prisoner happy. As I’m sure you’re well aware.” Hogan shoved his cap back. “You know, this would have been a whole lot easier if you men had been more honest with me. And your friend might have been out of that cell a lot sooner, too.”

LeBeau met his eyes. “Sir… I have been here for quite some time,” he said quietly. “I have seen many men come and go. Including several officers. And not… not all of them were trustworthy _. Pardon_ , sir, but there were more lives than just mine—just ours—at stake.”

Hogan couldn’t really argue with that. “I understand,” he said.

“You have all of our lives in your hand now, _Colonel_.” LeBeau shrugged. “There is nothing for us to do now except to wait. And to see what you do with them.”

Hogan nodded. He had started this conversation in a state of high dudgeon, but somehow, he wasn’t angry anymore. Truth be told, he was too intrigued to be angry. These men, with their byzantine plots, their apparently well-founded paranoia, and the undercurrent of bone-deep loyalty, were a great deal more than they seemed. Bringing this Newkirk back into the mix, he suspected, would change everything he had observed in this volatile barracks. Either his presence would stabilize the entire group, or something would blow sky-high.

A mischievous voice in the back of his head commented that, whichever way things turned out, it was going to be very interesting to watch.

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

Three days later, Hogan was lurking near the Kommandantur. LeBeau was waiting at the gate of the cooler, impatiently waiting for Newkirk to emerge. And when he finally did, Hogan was a bit stunned to see that, roughly two minutes after their genuinely delighted reunion, they were arguing.

Two days after that, he understood that he might as well get used to it, because they weren’t going to stop. Two _months_ after that, he understood that it was their idiosyncratic way of expressing affection. And two years after that, well… he just plain understood.

*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*

Things were comparatively quiet for a couple of weeks. Two absolutely brutal poker games and a mysteriously missing wallet later, they were back in the black market, which meant LeBeau was back in the kitchen. Minsk had transferred into Barracks Two, lock, stock, and tailoring gear, which meant that the rest of the men were learning Russian in self-defense. The tunnel hadn’t gotten much further, primarily because the two miners had taken one look at it and appeared to fight off simultaneous heart attacks. One had turned green. The other had gone sheet-white. Hogan was no judge of subterranean engineering, but their reactions had not, to his mind at least, indicated a great deal of confidence in the construction, which meant that new plans had to be drawn up before work could continue. Foxton had actually been a bit insulted.

Hogan had a lot of plans in mind. Oh, yes, a great many plans. Slowly but surely, he was getting his feet under him, and he thought he was really getting a handle on this camp, these men, this mission.

At the risk of mixing his sports metaphors, the fight seemed to come straight out of left field.

A number of prisoners had formed a rough ring, within which two men were circling each other, fists doubled and ready. Both were already a bit battered—a dribble of blood here, the beginnings of a black eye there—but neither man looked even close to backing down. Indeed, both were grinning just a bit, anticipatory or amused.

Hogan did not appear amused to recognize the combatants as Sergeant Kinchloe and Corporal Newkirk, and even less amused to realize that at least half of the spectators were betting on the outcome of the fight. Said spectators included most of the guards, who apparently had nothing better to do with their time.

Kinchloe fought like the trained boxer he was. He was steady, methodical, carefully pacing himself for the long haul, taking note of every minute flaw and opening in Newkirk’s defenses and taking full advantage of each one. Newkirk fought like a ruthless street thug who knew that there were only two possible outcomes—victory and death—and had no intention of dying if a low blow could help him avoid it. Mercy was not in his lexicon; he didn’t offer it, and he certainly didn’t expect it.

Kinch was bigger, stronger, and far more skilled; that was his advantage. Newkirk didn’t seem to notice or care how much punishment he took along the way so long as he was the one still standing at the end; that was his. Hogan, curious despite himself, had to squelch a momentary impulse to let the fight continue and see which technique eventually won out. It didn’t occur to him until much later that their tactics said a lot about their respective personalities.

“All right, knock it off! Both of you; stand down!” he bellowed, shoving his way into the ring. “What the hell’s the matter with you? You’re supposed to be on the same side, damn it!”

“Ah, Colonel Hogan,” Kinch began.

Hogan wasn’t having any. “Would anyone like to explain precisely what in the name of God is going on out here? Fighting? In front of the Krauts? You’d better have a damned good explanation!”

Newkirk took a deep breath. “It was me, sir. I provoked him.”

Kinch growled. “Damn it, Pete; don’t you ever get tired of falling on your sword? Colonel, it wasn’t a real fight. Just a little bit of sparring. For fun. And, um… a few side bets.”

“Well? Which is it?” Hogan asked. “Were you fighting, in clear contravention of the rules of conduct, or were you fraternizing with the enemy by gambling with the Krauts?”

“Er… Which one will get us a lighter sentence, sir?” Newkirk asked.

“Are you trying to be funny, Corporal?” Hogan snapped. “If so, I’d strongly advise you to reconsider that as a strategy!”

Newkirk, who quite obviously didn’t _have_ another strategy on which to fall back, went silent. So did Kinch. The silence stretched.

“My office. Both of you. _Now_.” Trusting that they would follow, Hogan turned on his heel and stormed into the barracks.

The two men in question traded glances; Kinch shrugged, and Newkirk sighed minutely as they followed Hogan across the compound. The other POWs wandered off in twos and threes; the guards, disappointed, did, too. Watching two prisoners, especially two such _unmatched_ prisoners, having a fight was at least a bit of a distraction; a public dressing down from an incensed superior officer carried the potential for humor. A closed door offered neither, and several of the guards felt cheated.

“Just bloody marvelous,” Newkirk groused, not bothering to lower his voice.

“At least the Colonel can’t send us to the cooler,” Kinch replied, without much hope in his own voice. He explored a split lip with his tongue, and grimaced. It was going to swell up like a cantaloupe, he could tell.

“Ours can’t. Theirs can. And usually does,” Newkirk said, rolling the one eye that was still in working order. Looking on the bright side wasn’t exactly his forte at the best of times, and being half-blind wasn’t helping.

LeBeau and Forrest caught up with them at the door. “I left Richmond to finish settling the bets,” Forrest said. “There was some grumbling, of course, but everyone will get back exactly what they started with, so there shouldn’t be much trouble.”

“Oh, good. That was really weighing on my conscience,” Newkirk sniped. “Never mind that. Did it work?”

LeBeau grinned. “ _Bien sur_! Like a charm,” he said triumphantly.

“Well, that’s a bit of all right,” Newkirk said, and smiled.

Kinch’s eyes glittered. “That’s a _big_ bit of all right,” he corrected. “Makes it all worthwhile. But I have to say—Newkirk, you have _got_ to be the dirtiest fighter I’ve ever seen.”

“Gutter scum, mate,” Newkirk said cheerfully. “Might not be pretty, but I’ve walked away from any number of fights with the same number of body parts I had when I walked in. What more can a bloke ask?”

“He could _ask_ that his men obey orders,” came a voice from the depths of the barracks. It was not a happy, cheerful voice. Not even a little bit. “He could _ask_ that they not sabotage camp morale. He could _ask_ that they not make us look ridiculous in front of the Krauts! My office, Corporal! On the double!”

Newkirk sighed again. “Nice knowing you, mates,” he murmured, and walked into the office.

The other three exchanged looks, and followed. Hogan was standing by his desk, eyes ablaze and the rest of him a study in cold fury. “Close the door behind you,” he said.

LeBeau did.


	22. Chapter 22

Hogan waited just long enough to be sure that there were no eavesdroppers, then a smile that gave new meaning to the words ‘ear to ear’ spread across his face. “That was beautiful! Absolutely perfect!”

LeBeau beamed, too, and pulled off his heavy jacket. Hidden beneath it were several small cotton bags, all tied to a bandolier slung over his left shoulder, separated so that nothing could clink or clatter. “ _Oui, Colonel!_ We have them.” He undid the clasp, lay the whole belt on Hogan’s desk.

Kinch reached for one of the bags, opened it. “That’s a transmitter, all right,” he said, satisfaction thick in his voice.

Newkirk’s fingers explored the belt for a moment, then he rubbed the back of his neck, emerging with a small dagger.

“Wait. You carry a _knife?_ ” Kinch asked, startled.

Newkirk’s shrug was a masterpiece of casual nonchalance. “Not always. Only on days that end in a ‘Y,’” he said.

“While I was punching the crap out of you, you were carrying a _knife_?”

“First of all, don’t flatter yourself. Second of all… actually, there isn’t a second of all,” Newkirk said, carefully slitting the seam of the bandolier. He grinned, showing just a few too many teeth, as he pulled the stitching apart to reveal a coil of wire inside the fabric.

Kinch’s eyes widened, just the tiniest bit. The dirtiest fighter he had ever seen, indeed.

Hogan opened another bag, weighed the component in his hand before carefully putting it down on the desk. “Well, how long do you think it will take you to turn these bits and pieces into a working radio?”

“Not too long,” Kinch said. “These bits and pieces, anyway. But without an antenna, this radio won’t be much more than a paperweight.”

“How big does it need to be?” Hogan asked.

“At least six or seven feet,” Kinch said. “And it needs to be as high as we can get it.”

“On top of the guard tower, perhaps?” Forrest said.

“Too visible,” Hogan said. “It needs to blend in, that’s the most important thing. Or… maybe not. The secret might just be making it so obvious that the Krauts never notice it.”

“Put it on the fence,” LeBeau said. “All that barbed wire… one more bit of metal would be nothing.”

“Might work,” Kinch said, and chuckled. “Just have to make sure that those German steel-chomping termites don’t go and eat it, right, Pete?”

Newkirk grinned at the memory, then froze. “The termites… that’s it!”

“What are you two talking about?” asked Forrest.

“German termites, and the way they salute with their little antennas, with a red swastika wrapped around their wings. That’s our answer.” Newkirk looked around the circle of mostly confused faces and elaborated. “What’s an antenna, then? A metal pole on top of a building. What do they hang their swastika from? A metal pole on top of a building! We’ll put _our_ antenna in _their_ flagpole, and who’d ever give it a second look?”

“Heaven knows I never look at that dreadful swastika if I can help it,” Forrest agreed.

Hogan’s grin, impossibly, got wider. “You know, I have the strangest feeling that there’s going to be a leak in the roof of the Kommandantur. A really, really bad leak. Isn’t that just awful? Who here has any experience fixing roofs, thank you, LeBeau, Kinch, and Newkirk.”

LeBeau looked startled. “But _Colonel…_ I know nothing about fixing roofs!”

“That’s all right,” Hogan waved off the objection. “You don’t have to. Do you know anything about looking busy when the boss is watching?”

“If he doesn’t, that much I can teach him,” Newkirk said.

“Perfect,” Hogan said. “All the two of you need to do is make a lot of noise and do a bit of hammering while Kinch is installing the antenna. And try not to fall off.”

“Roger that,” Newkirk said. “Never done much in the way of carpentry, sir, but I’m no stranger to crawling about on roofs. Or to making a lot of noise, come to that.”

LeBeau rolled his eyes at Newkirk. “If he can, I can. When shall we arrange for the leak?”

“Oh, not for a couple of days,” Hogan said, making a mental note to inquire further about Newkirk’s experiences with roof-crawling, sometime in the very near future. “We have to build the radio first. And arrange the metal for the antenna. And wait for it to rain.”

Richmond knocked on the door, poked his head in. “Sir?”

“Come in, Richmond. All set?”

He did. “Yes, sir. None of the Krauts suspected a thing. Although a couple of them did ask me on the sly if there was any chance we could arrange for a rematch sometime when you’re not around.”

Kinch grimaced. “I’d rather not,” he said wryly. “Not unless someone’s willing to frisk Newkirk ahead of time.”

Richmond nodded with perfect understanding. “Got a dekko at the pencil sharpener, eh?”

“Did _everyone_ know about that but me?” asked Kinch.

“I think there are still a few guards who haven’t tumbled to it,” said Forrest.

“I’ve changed my mind,” said Kinch. “There will be no rematch under _any_ circumstances.”

Newkirk shook his head theatrically. “Blimey. You Yanks are something else. Afraid of a fair fight? For shame.” Obviously too wounded to continue the discussion, he looked down, began cleaning the dirt from beneath his fingernails with the point of his knife.

LeBeau slapped him gently on the shoulder. “And the last time you were in a ‘fair’ fight was… when?”

“Probably the day I was shot down,” Newkirk said, abandoning his manicure. “One might say I learned my lesson.”

“Getting back to the business at hand,” Hogan cut in. “As soon as we build the antenna, we can use the radio. When we’ve established contact with the Underground, we can arrange transportation out of Germany.”

“And from there it’s back to good old London,” Forrest finished. “But it does all rather hinge on how soon we can get the tunnel redug.”

“Not quite,” Hogan said. There would never be a better time to broach the subject. “We’ll get it done, that’s not even a question. It all hinges on figuring out how to use the tunnel in such a way that the Krauts don’t know we built it.”

“What do you mean, Colonel?” asked Kinch.

“I mean, we want this tunnel to be more than just a one-time thing. So long as Krauts keep putting our boys _into_ this lousy place, we’re going to need a way to get them right back _out_ again. And the last thing we want is to have to keep digging the same tunnels over and over again. Therefore, we can’t let the Krauts even suspect that it’s there.”

“How could we possibly keep the tunnel secret after the escape?” Richmond asked. “I realize that the Jerries here aren’t exactly the sharpest knives in the drawer, but if ten or twenty men take French leave, there’s just no chance that they won’t start wondering how it was done.”

Newkirk looked searchingly at Hogan for a moment. Working something out in his head, Hogan assumed; he didn’t know the Englishman well enough yet to predict precisely what was going on under that blue cap, except to be fairly certain that, whatever it was, it would be yet more proof that ‘uneducated’ was not at all the same thing as ‘stupid.’

Finally, slowly, he nodded. “Magic,” he said. “That’s what we need. We’re going to use a magic trick to get the lads safe away.”

And then again, maybe not. “Not magic,” Hogan said carefully. “It’ll take some luck, and some very careful timing, but I’m afraid I left my book of spells back in London.”

Newkirk gave him an odd look, then stifled a chuckle. “No, sir. Sorry, sir; that did sound a tad strange, didn’t it? I don’t mean real magic. I’m talking about _stage_ magic, like I did back home. It’s all about misdirection,” he explained. “Oh, look at my right hand. Watch it very carefully, gents, abracadabra, presto change-o, and my left hand does the work while you’re distracted.”

“But if we know to watch your left hand,” LeBeau argued. “The trick will not work if we are on our guard.”

“That so?” Newkirk flexed his hands, swept his cap off of his head, and ran his fingers briefly through his hair. “Kinch, mate—can I borrow that coin you keep in your pocket for luck? Just for a minute.”

“Sure thing,” Kinch said, handing over the half-dollar, and smiling a bit in anticipation.

“Thanks kindly,” Newkirk said, tossing his cap onto the bunk, and held up the coin in his right hand where everyone could see it. “Right. Here we have a perfectly ordinary coin. What else should we use… of course. A handkerchief. Lots of magic tricks use those. Anybody got one?”

“Here,” Forrest said, holding it out.

Newkirk brushed past Richmond to take it, then stopped dead in his tracks, giving Forrest a theatrically suspicious look. “Wait. That is a _clean_ one, isn’t it?”

“As clean as your conscience,” Forrest said.

“Blimey, in that case, I don’t even want to touch the bleeding thing!” The men laughed. Forrest just rolled his eyes in amused exasperation as Newkirk took the handkerchief and returned to his place in the center of the circle.

“Right, I’ll just shake it out, so you can see that there’s nothing funny about it.” He did so with a flourish. “Louie, you’re the one what can’t be tricked, so I’ll give you Kinch’s coin, and we’ll just see if you can hang on to it.”

Warily, LeBeau extended his hand, palm up. Newkirk draped the handkerchief over LeBeau’s palm, showily pressed the disc into the handkerchief, folded in the corners so that the coin was snugly wrapped in fabric, then closed LeBeau’s fingers around it. “Right, you just keep that hand where we can all see it, now. No slipping it in your pockets or anything sneaky like that.”

Newkirk held up both his own hands, open and empty. “So. Kinch’s coin is safe and sound in Louie’s fist. Or is it?” He folded his hand into a fist, and gently bumped it against LeBeau’s. “Alakazam, hocus pocus, and all that. Show us what you’ve got, mate!”

LeBeau slowly opened his hand and unfolded the cloth. Sure enough, there was no coin there; just the golden RAF pin from Newkirk’s cap, which was roughly the same size and shape. When had he taken that off? He looked at Newkirk who opened his own hand to show, again, not a coin, but Kinch’s wristwatch, which he handed back with a bow.

“Thanks a lot, Pete,” Kinch said wryly. “Now where’s my coin?”

“What coin?”

“The one you’re about to make appear from God-knows-where,” Kinch said, strapping his wristwatch back where it belonged.

“Don’t know what you’re on about, mate,” Newkirk said mock-innocently. “Oi! Richmond! Turn out your pockets, there’s a good lad.”

Richmond, who was standing a good four feet away from Newkirk, made a face, but dug his hands into the pockets of his jacket… and to the surprise of no one, emerged with the half-dollar, which he handed back to Kinch.

Hogan whistled his approval. “All right; I’m officially impressed. How’d you do that?”

“Misdirection,” Newkirk repeated simply, retrieving his cap to repin the badge in its accustomed place. “A little misdirection, a little talent, and a whole lot of practice. It works with coin tricks. I assume it’ll work with Krauts, too.”

Hogan’s mind zipped through a great many implications very quickly. Sleight of hand was all very well, but, in addition to palming the badge and switching it for the coin, the man had demonstrated the ability to pick a pocket, steal a watch right off a man’s wrist, and deposit the evidence in a third location. Within seconds. On the spur of the moment. With the rest of them watching his every move. Hogan had compiled a lengthy list of ways in which those skills could be very, very useful before Newkirk had quite finished reattaching his pin.

“You’re exactly right, Newkirk,” he said warmly. “We want to get a bunch of prisoners out of here without the Krauts knowing how we did it. So we’re going to _show_ them how we did it. Or, at least, how we _could_ have done it.”

Kinch turned the coin over in his fingers. “We’re going to use the tunnel,” he reasoned aloud. “So we want them to think we got the men out some other way…”

“Over the wire?” Newkirk suggested. “We cut the wires, maybe in two or three places, they won’t look no further for escape routes.”

“Throw a few bones into the dog pen,” LeBeau added. “They will assume we drugged the dog food, and that will be why they did not bark.”

“We could, er, ‘borrow’ a few German uniforms from the dirty laundry,” Richmond offered.

Hogan stuffed his hands into his pockets, pleased. “All good ideas. I’m not sure what you need _me_ for.”

Newkirk shrugged whimsically. “Well, Colonel, while I appreciate the praise, they may sound like good ideas, but they’re all things we’ve already tried, at one time or another. And you might notice that we’re still here.”

Forrest snorted. “‘We’ tried?”

He rolled his eyes. “Fine. Things _I_ tried, at one time or another. Difference is, this time they’re not _supposed_ to work. All right?”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” Hogan said. “I imagine that they’ll work nicely, if not quite how you originally intended.”

“Story of my life,” Newkirk muttered, not entirely under his breath.

Hogan smirked. “Anyway, first things first. We need to turn this pile of spare parts into a radio, and we need to get that antenna on the roof. I’ll want that roof leaking like a sieve by the end of the week.”

“No problem there, Colonel. Making holes is a lot easier than repairing them. We’ll just take off a couple of shingles,” Kinch smiled. “But wouldn’t it be fun if a squirrel or something like that came in through the hole in the roof before we could fix it? Imagine him running around, knocking things over…”

“…Crapping all over Lange’s desk, chewing important papers, making a nest in his chair cushion,” Newkirk continued, that truly evil grin on his face again. “Maybe he’d even bite our beloved Kommandant when he goes to sit down.”

“Ah, no, Pierre; that is too cruel. He would need rabies shots!”

“Who cares if he does? Serve him right. I’m told those things hurt like blazes.”

“I was talking about the squirrel!”

The men laughed. Hogan didn’t. “That is a brilliant idea. Just brilliant! Good job!”

They stopped laughing.

Hogan turned to Newkirk. “Can you get me a bunch of old papers from Lange’s office? The good stuff. Letterhead, reports… anything that looks official and wouldn’t be missed?”

He frowned. “Don’t see why not. In fact, we’ve probably got some already. We’re the ones what tidy his office, and the stuff in his wastebasket makes for good kindling on the rare occasions there’s any wood for the stove.”

“Excellent. And LeBeau, you’re the chef. Is there a coffee mill to be had around here? Or a sausage grinder?”

“There is one in the guard’s mess, I believe,” LeBeau said. “I have none of my own.”

“Well, we’ll just have to borrow it,” Hogan said. “Gentlemen, our poor Kommandant is about to have the worst rodent infestation in the history of the entire war.”

This grand announcement, judging by the blank looks on the faces of the men, was not sufficiently enlightening in and of itself. Hogan continued. “A couple of holes in the walls, a few furry friends running around… those little guys will chew anything, isn’t that a shame? If Lange happened to get some important information one day, and, by the next, nothing was left of it but a pile of shredded paper…?”

“While we’re sending the originals off to London,” Kinch filled in the blanks. “If somebody were to slip into the office some night… those pesky mice can do so much damage.”

Newkirk, who knew as well as anyone else precisely who that ‘somebody’ was going to end up being, snorted. “Figures, don’t it? Just charming. The one bloody thing I swore I’d never do.”

LeBeau looked concerned. “What is that, _mon pote_?”

“Why, be a rat,” Newkirk said with a straight face.

Hogan’s eyes glittered as he watched his men give that little sally precisely the reception it deserved. Yes. Stephens had sent him to the right place; no doubt about that.

Forrest wasn’t laughing. Or helping his friends eviscerate Newkirk, either. His eyes were troubled. “Sir… Permission to speak freely?”

“Granted,” Hogan said.

“You’re talking about espionage,” Forrest said bluntly. “A prisoner’s first duty is to escape, and return to his own side. Not stealing intelligence or whatever else you’re planning. Sir. The radio is one thing. That could be very useful in arranging our escape. And tunnels are self-evident. But, sir… you’re not really talking about escaping, are you? You’ve something else in mind, don’t you?”

Hogan studied his face for a moment. “I suppose now is as good a time as any,” he said. “Yes, Forrest, I do have other plans. And yes, I am talking about espionage. About sabotage. About doing everything humanly possible to put a spoke in Adolf’s wheel, and about doing all of it from right here inside Stalag 13.”

You could have heard a pin drop in the barracks.

“I’m here to do just that,” Hogan continued. “And I’m not about to order anyone to do anything besides treating this as top secret. I _can’t_ order any of you to do anything, and I wouldn’t if I could. Volunteers only. But I was sent here to form an undercover intelligence unit, and that does mean that I’m thinking on a scale a bit broader than just a single escape.”

He looked around the room. Newkirk was watching him watching them. Forrest looked grim; Kinch looked thoughtful. LeBeau’s face was carefully blank. And Richmond was white as a sheet.

“This is a big question,” Hogan summed up. “And I don’t want any snap decisions, either way. Let’s get this radio put together, get working on the tunnel, start forging some Kraut travel papers. And, for the record, I won’t hold it against anyone who decides that this isn’t what they signed on for. No shame in it. I’ll still get you out of here, safe back to London; you have my word on that. There are more ways than one to win this war, and if you think you’d be more useful back in the air, I can’t fault you. Dismissed.”

Quietly, perhaps a bit stunned, the men gathered up the radio components and returned them to their rattle-proof bags. Newkirk made his knife vanish somewhere into his clothing; he wasn’t smiling anymore. All five of them left the office.

Ironically, as they scattered, they looked subdued and a bit stunned, as though they really had gotten the royal chewing out that Hogan had threatened after the now almost forgotten mock fight.

*.*.*.*.*.*

Author’s note: To ‘take French leave’ means to vanish without a proper farewell; it can also be used to mean going AWOL. The expression dates back at least two hundred years. The funny thing is that the phrase exists in a number of different languages, always picking on someone else. In French, it is ‘filer a l’anglaise’ or, ‘to leave English-style.’ In German, it’s ‘taking Polish leave.’ Et cetera. Rudeness is universal; it’s just that everyone thinks that the other fellow is the rude one, I suppose.


	23. Chapter 23

No one not warned ahead of time would ever have suspected that the man delivering the antenna was the same gentleman who had brought the radio components a week before. Last time, he had, ostensibly, been delivering a load of vegetables, decked out as an old farmer with a squint and an apparent disinterest in regular bathing; a clever disguise, since none of the Germans had wanted to get close enough to get a good look at his face. Hogan made a mental note of the stratagem for later use. Although preferably not his _own_ use, unless of course it became absolutely necessary. Rank had to have a _few_ privileges, and not smelling like a cross between a compost heap and the Thames at low tide, if it could possibly be avoided, was surely one of them.

Forrest, Foxton, and Hawkins were doing a halfhearted job of picking up rubbish near the front gates under the eagle-eyed supervision of Corporal Otto, and the rather more lenient gaze of Colonel Hogan, when a jeep appeared at the gates and honked an irritated bid for entrance. Newkirk, his mostly empty trash bag slung over his shoulder and his pick-up stick nowhere in sight, had entirely abandoned ‘doing a halfhearted job’ in favor of ‘skiving off entirely’ as soon as the car entered the compound, and was unobtrusively propping up the base of the guard tower. Under most circumstances, this dereliction of duty would have been looked upon with disfavor by guard and prisoner alike. Fortunately for him, the visitors, two men in black SS uniforms, flustered Otto enough that he did not notice the shirking, and the prisoners had other things to think about.

“So,” said the SS lieutenant, giving the men a look that was about half a shade too polite to be an outright sneer. “Garbage carrying garbage, eh? I see, Corporal, that you have done the impossible! You have found a task that is within an Englander’s capabilities. I commend you.”

Otto snapped to attention. “Jawohl, Herr Lieutenant,” he said happily. “The prisoners are kept busy, so that they do not make trouble.”

 _Now_ the lieutenant sneered. “Oh, yes, yes, I see. You keep them very busy. Except for this one, eh? Does he have a note from his mother excusing him from the war?” Suiting the action to the word, he took two quick steps towards Newkirk and grabbed him by the arm, jerking him away from the tower. “You just stand there, eh, _inselaffe_? Afraid of a little honest work?” He shoved him towards the jeep; Newkirk stumbled and fell against it, half in and half out of the open vehicle.

The other officer seized him by the collar and dragged him roughly back to his feet. “Away from my car, swine! I will not drive a car smelling of your filth!” 

Newkirk, surprisingly, didn’t rise to the bait; he just stood there, silently fuming, a long metal pole in his hand. It looked quite similar to the sticks carried by the other prisoners. Not quite identical, but close. The lieutenant laughed. “Perhaps, Hansi, we should bring this one back to our headquarters, and we see if he can be taught a German work ethic.”

‘Hansi’ laughed, too. “Impossible. As if an Englander could ever be compared to a German in any way! Ridiculous!”

Hogan shoved his way over to Newkirk, stood between him and Otto, blocking him from getting too close a look at the stick. “All right, all right; you’ve had your fun, now leave him alone. Newkirk, get back to work before I put you on report.”

“Yes, sir,” Newkirk said, and began making his way back to the barracks, randomly stabbing at the ground here and there as he went. There wasn’t any actual trash where he was stabbing, as a rule, but that was all right, since the stick in his hand didn’t actually have a spike with which to pick it up if there had been.

Hogan turned to ‘Hansi,’ and nodded the tiniest bit. _Thank you._ ”Well, Lieutenant, it’s been a real pleasure seeing you. Feel free to drop in any time. Preferably without a parachute.”

Hansi, also known as Jamison, chuckled. “Still insolent, I see,” he said happily. _You’re quite welcome._ ”Well, Colonel, the day will come when you will be only too eager to tell us everything you know. I am patience itself. Corporal!”

Otto, impossibly, straightened up even further. “Yes, Herr Lieutenant?”

“You will deliver this to your Kommandant,” he said, tossing over a dispatch envelope that contained eight beautifully forged pages of utter balderdash. “Heil Hitler!”

“Heil Hitler,” Otto parroted as the pseudo SS men climbed back into their jeep and drove back around towards the gates, then out and away along the road.

That evening, a pry bar in hand, Newkirk shinnied dexterously to the roof of the Kommandantur, and removed several shingles. Hogan watched from the window.

“I hope the rain doesn’t get onto the desk,” Hogan said. “Or the filing cabinets. We might still want some of the stuff in there.”

“Do not worry. We paced off the distance this afternoon,” LeBeau said. “It will drip on the coat rack, and on the floor, but the papers will all be safe.”

Richmond managed a smile. “Newkirk wouldn’t let the rainwater hit the desk, Colonel. Lange keeps his schnapps there.”

“Correction, then. We’ll _definitely_ want some of the stuff in there,” Hogan said, still watching the lithe figure on the roof. Hogan had seen mountain goats that were less sure-footed.

Kinch looked up from the crank mechanism he was installing at the bottom of the antenna. “This should do it, Colonel. All we can really do now is wait for it to rain.”

“That shouldn’t take long,” said Hogan. “This is Germany; when _isn’t_ the weather foul?”

*.*.*.*.*.*

It didn’t rain that night. Or the next day. Hogan cursed himself for trusting a Kraut weather forecast as they trudged back to the barracks after lunch.

Hogan plunked himself down next to Newkirk, who was dealing himself a hand of solitaire at their battered table. “Nice weather we’re having,” he said, just the slightest hint of irony in his voice.

“Yes, sir, it certainly is,” Newkirk agreed disingenuously, and flipped over a card. Ace of clubs.

“Nice and warm,” Hogan continued. “Not a cloud in the sky.”

“The sun glittering off the machine guns just gets me right here,” Newkirk said, tapping his heart sentimentally.

Hogan abandoned the subtle approach. “I’d like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind.”

Newkirk saluted. “At your service, sir.” Finally. Might as well get all the figurative cards on the table, he thought, scooping up the literal ones and putting them aside.

Hogan nodded. “A magician, eh?”

“Among other things,” Newkirk said steadily.

“You’re pretty good at climbing roofs,” Hogan said.

“Very kind of you to say, sir.”

“I’ve watched you fight, and I wouldn’t care to meet you in a dark alley. I’ve seen you picking pockets, and I’m told you’re pretty good at picking locks.” Hogan looked him square in the eye. “Second story man?”

Newkirk smiled faintly. “Among other things,” he repeated.

“What other things?”

“Short version? Anything what needs doing. Locked doors don’t trouble me overmuch, and no pocket’s safe from me if I decide I want a look inside. I can crack a safe, operate a radio, tailor a suit, mimic any voice I hear, and I don’t miss what I’m aiming at. That’s with a gun, a knife, a rock, or a bleeding bow and arrow. I can also make a deck of cards do just about anything I tell it to, climb a wall without a rope, forge a travel pass, and sing tenor.”

“You’ve had an adventurous life, sounds like,” Hogan said. “I’d figured to meet Sergeant York here in camp. I hadn’t quite expected Professor Moriarty.”

Newkirk didn’t dignify that with a response.

“I’m not going to beat around the bush. I’ve already told you all why I’m here and what I plan to do. I’m not trying to strong-arm you into anything, but you can see for yourself how valuable someone with your skills could be in a job like that.”

“I do see that, sir,” Newkirk said. “But I can also see that you’re wondering exactly how far you can trust a crook like me. If I’m willing to admit to this much, what might I be hiding?”

“I’d have put it a bit more tactfully than that,” Hogan said.

“Why bother?” he said. “It’s a fair question, and no need to dress it up in its Sunday clothes. Once that aerial is in place, I suppose you could get London on the radio and ask them to check the police records.”

Hogan shrugged. “I suppose I could. It would be quicker if I asked you to tell me what they’d find.”

“Nothing,” Newkirk said, with a fierce, almost defiant pride. “They’d find exactly nothing. A few times when I assisted the constabulary with their inquiries, but no arrests. Not a one. Sir. I didn’t see the inside of a prison until I went and bloody enlisted, and don’t think the irony hasn’t occurred to me, either.”

“I see. What does ‘assisted with their inquiries’ mean?”

“Means they knew I did it, or that I knew who did, but they had no actual proof,” Newkirk said, with a quirk in his lips that didn’t have much to do with humor. “Means they dragged me into the back room and encouraged me to do my civic duty. But since they never had anything on me, I always walked back out again.”

“So what you’re telling me is that you’re good at what you do. And tough enough not to crack under… vigorous persuasion. I like it. I only have one real question.”

“What is that, sir?”

“Like I said. A man with your talents would be invaluable in the sort of outfit I’m running. And I don’t care how you came by those skills. I really don’t, and I’m not asking. All I want to know is whether, among those things the cops knew you did and couldn’t prove, there was ever anything worse than theft?”

“Sir?”

“Murder. Rape. Arson. Kidnapping. Assault. Anything like that?”

His eyes widened. “Bloody _hell_ , sir. What do you take me for?” There was a small red spot on each cheek, but he sounded more hurt than angry. “I steal, sir. I cheat at cards. Someone comes after me to do me wrong, if I can’t run I’ll defend myself, I’ll freely admit to that, and when they wake up wishing they’d left me alone, I don’t have much sympathy. But they do wake up. I’m no killer, and I don’t hurt innocents. Sir.”

“This is war,” said Hogan. “You might have to.”

“This is war,” Newkirk agreed. “I’ll grant you, the rules are different. But even so, I’m a soldier, not a murderer. And with all due respect, sir, I resent the implication.”

Hogan nodded. “In your place, I would too,” he said. “But I won’t apologize for asking. I had a feeling… but you know I had to ask.”

“Sir,” Newkirk said. It was acknowledgement, not agreement.

One more thing occurred to him. “Say, Newkirk,” he said. “Might as well get all the insulting questions out of the way at once. About those cards that do what you tell them to. I know you cheat the guards, and that’s fine by me. But I’ve heard you run crooked card games among the prisoners, too. Is that true?”

“‘Course it is, Colonel,” he said bluntly. “If I didn’t cheat, how could I possibly keep things fair?”

“You cheat... to keep it fair. Are you sure we’re talking about the same thing here?”

“I believe so, sir. Oh, I take them for everything they’ve got, thieving twister that I am, wind them up a bit, and then when they win most of it back a bit later, they’re so pleased with themselves for putting one over on old Peter that nobody ever really notices that they’re all ending up not quite back where they started.”

Hogan blinked. “What's the point of that?”

“Think about it, sir. By definition, someone winning means that someone else, a lot of someone elses, are going to lose, and like anywhere else, we got men what could draw a natural royal flush and still manage to lose their ruddy shirts. And then we’ve got the sort—me, sure, but I’m far from the only one—who could sit there with nothing in their hand but their fingers and bluff them out of their life savings. Even leaving skill out of it, someone’s always going to lose. Leads to bad feelings, that does.”

“I see,” said Hogan.

“Left to themselves, a few games of chance gone sour could end up starting a war of our very own here in the barracks. I’ve seen it happen. The Krauts would like nothing better than a reason to make our lives even more of a living hell than they already are, and I’d rather not give them an excuse. So I, er, work my magic, everyone stays mostly square, and if I get a punch in the nose or a dirty look or two along the way, it’s still better to have all the trouble in one spot then let it spread over the whole bleeding camp.”

“And you keep just enough of their money to keep your reputation as a card sharp intact.”

“No, I keep just enough of their money to bribe the guards into keeping their filthy noses out of our business,” Newkirk corrected. “You’ve heard the saying that silence is golden? ‘Round here it’s printed, too. What it’s not is cheap.”

“So you do make deals with the guards.”

“The ones what can be bought, yes, I do.” He gave the Colonel a level look. “I’m not going to tell you I’m some sort of saint, sir. I’m not one. I’m a thief and a dodger and a card sharp and an all-round bastard, and there’s not much I wouldn’t stoop to if it meant keeping us all alive another day.”

“Sounds to me like I was right the first time. All that makes you just the sort of man I need.”

“Quite possibly,” Newkirk said. “Which only leaves the question of whether _you’re_ the sort of man _I_ need.”

*.*.*.*.*.*

Author’s note: Sergeant York was a WWI war hero; a wildly popular biopic was made in 1941. Unless Lange was running regular movie nights, which, somehow, I rather doubt, Newkirk would have had no opportunity to see the film, but York was famous enough that he would probably have heard of the man. Professor Moriarty, of course, was Sherlock Holmes arch-enemy, a brilliant master criminal; it’s a rather back-handed compliment at best, but Hogan is really trying to make a potentially uncomfortable conversation as pleasant as possible.

As for Jamison’s little SS impersonation, and the name-calling, he used a really nasty German pejorative term for an Englishman that would probably have earned him a sock in the jaw under other circumstances. Ugh.


	24. Chapter 24

Newkirk was not unaware that being rude, disrespectful, and downright insubordinate was, as a general rule, frowned upon by officers. Even officers who had been asking impertinent questions. Perhaps _especially_ by officers who had been asking impertinent questions.

On the other hand, what, exactly, could the Yank do to him? Hogan had already asked him to stay in prison and/or get himself shot, and that had been _before_ Newkirk had mouthed off. He had nothing left to lose by speaking his mind, and, depending on Hogan’s reaction, he had, potentially, everything to gain. He’d never met an officer like Hogan before. He’d never met _anyone_ like Hogan before. If he could be trusted, if he was for real… if he wasn’t Weston all over again…

The Colonel wanted honesty, did he? Good. So did Newkirk. He’d gamble everything on one roll of the dice, and hope that his long losing streak was finally at an end.

 _“I’m not going to tell you I’m some sort of saint, sir,”_ Newkirk had said. _”I’m not one. I’m a thief and a dodger and a card sharp and an all-round bastard, and there’s not much I wouldn’t stoop to if it meant keeping us all alive another day.”_

 _“Sounds to me like that makes you just the sort of man I need,”_ the Colonel had drawled.

 _“Quite possibly,”_ Newkirk had said _. “Which only leaves the question of whether_ ** _you’re_** _the sort of man_ ** _I_** _need.”_

Hogan leaned forward, quirked a quizzical eyebrow. “I suppose it does. What’s your gut telling you?”

“That you’re trouble, sir, twenty-four carat trouble. You’ve got it in your head that a bunch of beat-down, half-starved prisoners can outfox the whole Third Reich, and it’s all going to end with a firing squad putting in for a great deal of overtime. Not to mention wear and tear on their rifles. Sir.”

“It might,” Hogan conceded. “It just might. But before that happens, wouldn’t you like to be a part of kicking Hitler in the nuts a time or two?”

“I’d like a lot of things,” said Newkirk, blatantly evading the question. “Do you have a plan, then, or are we just hoping that the good fairy leaves one in the garden? Seeing as how we haven’t got food, medicine, weapons, tools, or anything else besides the rags on our ruddy backs?”

“The rags on our backs and a radio, don’t forget about that. The good fairy’s based in London, and you’d be amazed at what she’s going to send us. All of the above and then some.”

“And in return all we have to do is volunteer for suicide missions until some Kraut gets lucky? Charming.”

“Appealing to your sense of patriotism isn’t going to get me anywhere, is it?” Hogan sat up straight. Newkirk was being insubordinate as hell, but somehow, Hogan didn’t feel attacked. If anything, it felt as though the other man was trying to help him iron out details, and flesh out his game plan. Whether or not he could be made to believe, he wanted at least to understand. “What will?”

“Appeal to my _brain_ , sir. Leave the flash talk for the long winter evenings. Tell me what you want of me. What you want to do, how you want to do it, why you think it’ll work. That sort of thing.”

“Escapes. Lots of them,” Hogan said bluntly. Cards on the table. “I think that with a little bit of effort, and the cooperation of the local Underground, we could get a lot of men out of German hands.”

That did it. If he’d been blind, deaf, and elsewhere, Hogan might have possibly been able to miss the palpable longing that flickered across the other man’s face. Maybe. Hogan remembered that he’d already been a guest of the Reich for more than two years, and he braced himself for the inevitable next question.

It didn’t come. Instead, surprising him, Newkirk asked, “You mentioned the Underground like they’re ready to go whenever you say the word. We weren’t even sure they actually _existed_. Smugglers and black marketers are one thing, but guides out of Germany are quite another. You’re telling me you’ve already got contacts in place?”

“I do,” Hogan said. “Downed flyers, or escapees from other stalags, or whoever, will make their way here as best they can. We bring them in, set them up with civilian clothing, maps, fake papers, money—the works. Once they’re properly outfitted and ready to blend in, we take them back out, get them to the first link in the Underground network, and it’s auf Wiedersehen to Uncle Adolf.” He looked him directly in the eye. “I think that I can save a lot of lives.”

Newkirk thought about that. If he signed on for this little adventure, and things went sideways, which, sooner or later, they surely would, being taken out and shot was the best-case scenario. If he didn’t sign on, whether things went sideways or not, he’d spend the rest of his life wondering if his help might have made the difference. Besides, if the Krauts won the war, the ‘rest of his life’ wouldn’t be worth spit anyhow. Nor anyone else’s. He owed it to everyone from the king on down to do everything he could to see to it that the right side won the war. A few little things like capture, imprisonment, near-certain torture, and death hadn’t changed that fundamental truth.

Escapes. A lot of them. Every man they got home was one more man standing between the Nazi hordes… and Mavis. If he had the right sort of help, the Colonel might be able to accomplish a good bit before they nabbed him and hauled him off for a nice little chat with the Gestapo and their thumbscrews. Maybe.

“And not just escapes,” Hogan continued. “I wasn’t kidding about stealing intelligence from the Kommandantur. I want information. Maps. Weapons schematics. Transcripts of Hitler and Eva’s pillow talk. I don’t care what it is; anything that even _looks_ valuable to the war effort, I want to steal it, copy it, and send it back to London. I want to booby-trap every inch of railroad they’ve got. Blow their bridges to matchwood. I want to win this war, and I want to win it _yesterday_.” His eyes blazed, a bit carried away with his own eloquence. His hands squeezed into fists. “For us, the war is _not_ over, not unless we let it be. Not yet, it’s not! _Not goddamned yet!_ ”

Newkirk looked at him. He was fairly sure that the colonel hadn’t intended to say most of that out loud. No, he’d been shouting down the voices in his head; Newkirk had been more or less an innocent bystander. Newkirk knew a con when he saw one, and he wasn’t seeing one now. It just rang too true to be theatrics. Too visceral. Too honest. Newkirk gave up telling himself that he was still thinking it over. He’d already made his decision, and he knew it.

He shook his head. “I’ve only one thing to say, sir, and I’d like it clearly understood,” he said slowly.

Hogan looked at him, impassive.

Newkirk met his gaze uncompromisingly. “When they’re measuring us up for the drop, I _am_ going to say ‘I told you so.’ Deal?”

“ _Us_ , you say?” Hogan grinned, and clapped a hand on his shoulder. He wasn’t even remotely surprised to find that the man was tense and alert as a coiled spring beneath the deceptively casual slouch. “Measuring _us_? Ha! Never happen! Have some faith, Corporal! We’ll probably be shot, not hanged.”

“Same condition, then. As they’re tying on our blindfolds,” Newkirk said, that Cheshire Cat grin licking around the corners of his mouth again. “Fair warning. I’m a right royal pain in the arse, Colonel. But if you want me, I’ll be _your_ pain in the arse.”

“Corporal Newkirk,” Hogan said, and he meant it, “That’s a noble offer, and I’m deeply honored. Welcome back to the war.”

“Thank you, sir. Guess we’ll have to see which one of us regrets it first.”

Hogan smirked. “I guess we will. But, Newkirk… why? You can’t tell me that five minutes of my sales pitch made you change your mind. You’re not that easy to snow. And I’ve seen your record. You’ve got more escape attempts under your belt than they had paper to write them down on. Are you just angling for a way out of here? If you are, I’d rather you said so up front, and we could work things out from there.”

“No, sir. To all of it. No, not just a dodge, and no, not just five minutes. And no, sir—I’m _not_ that easy to snow, and thank you for noticing. But I’ve been watching you since you walked into my cell; I think you’re on the level. I think you can do what you think you can do. If you can, it’s something I want in on. If you can’t, well, I’m already on borrowed time, and I’ve never _actually_ expected to walk out of here. What’ve I got to lose?”

“You know the answer to that as well as I do,” Hogan said. “As things stand right now, you’re comparatively safe. This place isn’t the Ritz by any stretch of the imagination, but if you keep playing it smart, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll make it home. Whereas if you join my crew…”

“If I join up, when I get caught, the Gestapo thugs take me into _their_ back room. And a week or three later, they prop whatever’s left of me up against the wall and pot themselves a corporal. I know, sir.”

Hogan grimaced. “...Eloquently put. So you’re _not_ just trying to bargain for a ride home.”

“No. I’m not dickering with you, sir; not over this. Couldn’t if I wanted to. I’ve nothing to bargain with,” Newkirk replied. “Yes, I ruddy well want out of this pit. I’d be mad not to. I want it like I want my next breath… and no one’s offering me _that,_ either. Least of all you. At most, you’re offering me the chance to help a lot of other people get theirs.”

Hogan nodded slowly. It was true.

“You need a thief. Very well, then. You’ll still need one in a month, or a year, or however long this sodding war lasts, so if I take the job, it’s for the duration—I’d be the last person you’d send home. If I tell you to pound sand, I don’t _deserve_ any favors… and so I’d be the last person you’d send home. One way or the other, I’m not leaving Germany anytime soon. Might as well do something to pass the time.”

Hogan shook his head. “That’s no kind of reason to get involved with an operation like mine. I don’t want you here if you’re feeling cornered, or like I blackmailed you into it. And I definitely don’t want you here if all you can do is shrug and say ‘why not.’ I’ll admit your skill set would come in handy. But that attitude isn’t good enough, not by a long shot. We’re talking about the fate of the whole world here!”

“No. We’re not. We’re talking about a hell of a lot more than that!” He jerked his head towards the tunnel entrance. “You saw our tunnel. We were hoping that ten, maybe fifteen men could make it out of here. Way I see it, that means we were working to save ten, maybe fifteen whole worlds. You’re talking about saving, what, a hundred? A thousand? More? That’s a thousand good reasons right there.”

“You weren’t digging that gopher hole for purely altruistic reasons, though, were you?” Hogan asked. “You were going to be one of that ten or fifteen, right?”

Newkirk looked briefly away. “That wasn’t decided yet,” he said. “Maybe, maybe not. There were… a few details that needed tending before we settled the final roster.”

Hogan frowned. There was more there to unpack. “Going by length of stay rather than rank, you had seniority. And from what I hear, you were working like a Trojan. Your name should have been on that list.”

“And it might have been. But there were a lot of blokes jockeying for a very few tickets out of Krautland. The chaps what went had to be the ones likeliest to make it out clean, or there was no point. And the ones who stayed had to be the ones who could get the next escape rolling.”

“And you figured that would be you, huh? So you were figuring to set up your own version of my operation even before I came?”

“I wouldn’t put it quite like that,” Newkirk said. Not even remotely like that. He thought about Lange, about how he would react to an escape, and suppressed a shiver. Oh, to hell with it. It was far too late to start worrying about disclosing too much. “I’ve got… something of a reputation with the Kommandant. Chances were that my main role in the escape would’ve been playing fox to give the others a chance to get away.” Back home, fox hunts were popular in certain exalted circles, for reasons that probably made a lot of sense to the hunters. The hounds seemed to enjoy them, too. The fox didn’t get a vote.

Hogan’s eyes widened a bit. “And you were _okay_ with that?”

“Not by a long chalk. But if that’s how things are, it’s how they are. So it’s not a matter of getting away or staying here. It’s a matter of playing fox for fifteen, or playing it for a hundred, and it’s an easy choice to make. I also think that you’ve got a better plan for the hundred than we did for the fifteen. Which means better odds for me. And even if it _does_ all go pear-shaped, better to fail trying something big than fail trying something small.”

“Huh. Do you always figure things out from three different perspectives before you make a decision?”

“Don’t you? I’ve never had the luxury of doing otherwise. I could work out all the angles— and I do mean _all_ of them— or I could end up dead. In your line of work—beg pardon, sir; _our_ line of work—seems to me that the same rule would apply.”

“It does. But just to be clear, that doesn’t mean that when I give an order, you get to mull it over and decide whether or not you want to obey it.”

His lips tightened, obviously a bit offended that Hogan thought that he needed the warning. He flicked a finger at the stripes on his sleeve. “I’ve got a pair of jacks,” he said, then nodded at the eagle on Hogan’s collar. “You’re holding an ace-high straight. I know how the military works, sir.”

“I know you do. I wouldn’t have asked you to be a part of this if I thought otherwise,” Hogan said. “But like I said, we might as well get all of the insulting questions out of the way at once. Oh, wait. One more question. You’ve been here a while. **Sprechen Sie Deutsch**?”

“I’ve picked up a few words, sir. The important ones, anyhow. ‘ **Achtung** ,’ and ‘ **hande hoch** ,’ and ‘ **verboten** ,’ and the like.” He pretended to think about it. “I can say ‘On your knees, you filthy English pig-fucker, and if you move so much as a muscle I’ll blow your goddamned head off,’ if you want. Learned _that_ one the day I was captured.”

“I’ll pass, thanks anyway,” Hogan said, a bit disappointed. “I’m going to start everyone on German 101 tomorrow; it will be a lot easier to work if we can blend in, and it will be a lot easier to blend in if we speak the language.”

Newkirk nodded. “ **Yes, that’s a good idea, Herr Oberst** **,”** he said, switching languages without missing a beat. **“I can get some German books from the guards’ quarters, if you’d like. There’s got to be at least a copy or two of ‘Mein Kampf’ lying about.”**

 **“That would be helpful** **—** ” Hogan cut himself off, suddenly noticing that they were no longer speaking English. He lifted an ironic eyebrow. “A few words, huh?”

“The important ones,” Newkirk said. “Truth be told, I would be grateful for some help expanding my vocabulary beyond profanity and threats; none of the guards what I learned from are exactly Oxford material, if you get my drift.”

“Probably not even Heidelberg,” said Hogan. “What about the others?”

“Varies. Kinch is better than I am; don’t tell him I said so. LeBeau understands more than he’d like to admit, but can’t seem to shake his accent when he speaks. Richmond’s got a decent accent on the few words he knows, but his vocabulary is spotty at best and his grammar is worse. Forrest reads it like a native, and he’s got the accent down pat, but has trouble understanding what he hears.”

“Okay. Your German accent is good.”

“Yeah. I can do just about any accent I hear, sir, if I’ve a chance to listen to it for a bit,” Newkirk said, in a dead-on imitation of Hogan, including his intonations and delivery. “That includes a couple of different German dialects, courtesy of a couple of different guards. It’s the difference between being shouted at by a Berliner or a Prussian. They mostly all hit alike, but they sound different while they’re doing it.”

“Good to know,” Hogan said. “This is going to be one hell of a roller coaster ride, I can just tell.”

Newkirk grinned again. “Wouldn’t want the war to get boring, now would we? And there’s only so long you can play cards before going clear ‘round the bend.”

Hogan grinned back. “Oh, that’s where you’re wrong. I play games all the time. And I’m going to _keep_ playing until the Nazis are slinking away from the table with their tails between their legs. Don’t you like games?”

Showily, Newkirk bridged the deck of cards that was still lying on the table, shuffled expertly, and cut the deck into four piles. Eyes gleaming, he flipped over the top card of each stack to reveal the four aces. “Only the ones I can win, sir. Only the ones I can win.”

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

Author’s note: In the ‘do you speak German’ bit, I would have liked to borrow a bit of shtick from the film ‘Stalag 17.’ One of the prisoners, ribbing the guard, (named Schultz, as it happens,) calls out ‘Sprechen Sie Deutsch?’ And, as the guard nods yes, the prisoner retorts, ‘Then droppen Sie dead!’ Great film, but it wasn’t written until the ‘50s, so no dice. Alas. It is, however, interesting to imagine the Heroes going to see the film, nearly a decade after the war… all about a daring escape from a POW camp, complete with spies and informers and double-dealing and a shifty con artist stage-managing the whole thing… would they laugh? Or cry?


	25. Chapter 25

Tunneling under the quasi-expert direction of the two miners was no more enjoyable than doing so on the proverbial wing and a prayer, but it _did_ prove to be a lot less exciting. Paradoxically enough, a camp full of men who complained more or less continually about boredom, and who had gone to some rather impressive lengths to alleviate said boredom, were openly grateful for hours spent uneventfully shifting dirt. If ‘uneventful’ translated to ‘ceilings that stay where we left them,’ the men seemed to agree, then bring on the monotony.

Which isn’t to say that they got any less creative in their attempts at combating cabin fever. For instance, one rainy Thursday, for lack of anything more productive to do, they’d had arm-wrestling contests. No one ever quite remembered how the time-honored pastime had morphed into a team sport on that particular day, but Hogan’s expression, as he entered the main room just as Newkirk, Kinch, and LeBeau, their arms entwined like vines on a beanpole, were disposing of Hawkins, Richmond, and Foxton, had been priceless. His expression a few minutes later as he, paired with Forrest and MacDonald, had been effortlessly walloped by the still undefeated Terrible Trio had been even more so. The expressions of everyone else in the barracks, as Hogan pleasantly congratulated the winners and then saddled them with KP duty for a week, had been the best of all.

Much of the original tunnel had, to the pleasure of all involved, been salvageable. That was the good news. The bad news was that salvaging it involved, to the displeasure of everyone in camp, a great deal of reinforcement and re-propping. That took timber, a commodity in chronically short supply. It was finally beginning to get warm enough outside that firewood was no longer a matter of life and death, but it was still jealously hoarded. LeBeau wasn’t the only one who used the barracks stoves to commit acts of cuisine, just the most skilled.

Dismantling the bunks, the only other obvious source of lumber, was equally problematic. There weren’t enough beds to go around in the first place, and there were only so many slats that could be removed before rendering those few unusable. It was a difficult problem.

Hogan did his fair share of digging. He figured that he would gain more in credibility than he would lose in authority— or aching muscles— by pitching in with the grunt work. Right now, he very much needed the men to see him, not merely as someone who dispensed orders, but as someone trustworthy, someone who shared their troubles and travails. That went for the men he was hoping to retain as well as the ones he intended to ship out.

That evening, as it happened, he was working with Newkirk. The tunnel had expanded a bit; it was now large enough that a man could work in a kneeling position, if he ducked his head a little, rather than lying flat on his stomach. It still wasn’t exactly a luxury model, but it was better than it had been.

They’d been chipping away at the hard ground for more than two hours, and they were running out of energy, good humor, camaraderie, candles, and conversation, more or less simultaneously. A minor dirtfall didn’t help matters any.

“Your uniform has certainly seen better days,” Hogan said with a frown, as they dusted themselves off and spat out mouthfuls of mud. Well, actually, that wasn’t the _first_ thing he said after the dirtfall, but it was the first thing he said that was at all relevant to the situation at hand. It was also the first thing that wouldn’t have gotten his mouth washed out with soap. One often overlooked benefit to becoming fluent in a second language is the expanded vocabulary of profanities. “It’s supposed to be blue, isn’t it?”

Newkirk looked down at his ragged, threadbare pullover as if he were seeing it for the first time. The dim, flickering candlelight masked the worst of it, but even so, there was no denying that it had faded badly after two and a half years of nearly constant wear. “Yes, well,” he said. “It used to be. But, then, after a couple of years in our little corner of paradise, Guv’ner, you’ll probably be a bit gray yourself.”

Hogan grinned. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” he said easily. “Anyhow, I plan to complain to the Red Cross. We should be able to get them to send you something better to wear in fairly short order.”

He shrugged. “I’m hardly the worst off for warm clothes, sir,” he said. “There are a lot of men in far direr straits.”

“That’s definitely true. Half the camp is wandering around in getups I wouldn’t use for cleaning rags. I meant that the Red Cross was going to have to resupply _all_ of you. Plural.”

Newkirk sighed. “Not too bloody likely, if you’ll pardon my saying, sir. The post office isn’t any too reliable in here. Stuff the Red Cross sends has got this odd tendency to get lost in the mail. The ladies of Hammelberg would be modeling their new khaki dirndls by Tuesday. And no good trying to get it smuggled in from London, either. Radios and things we can hide are one thing. Stuff the Krauts are going to see, like our uniforms, are another.”

“We’ll see about that,” Hogan said. “We have the right to receive mail, and supplies from the Red Cross, too.”

Hogan couldn’t figure out how he did it, but Newkirk could convey the _sense_ of a disbelieving snort while maintaining a poker face that would do credit to an actual statue. He still found the Englishman, with his quicksilver moods and pretzel logic, hard to read. Newkirk had offered his services; Hogan had accepted. That much was clear. But it was plain that, while Newkirk was willing to stake his life on Hogan’s ability to outfox the Germans, it was at least partially because he already considered it as good as lost.

Hogan turned the question over and over in his head, worrying at it like a dog with a bone. How did one go about convincing a man who had spent so many years getting the short end of the stick that he no longer believed that the long end even existed?

After a while, he glanced at his watch. Quarter to four; roll call was at six. “Okay, I’m bushed. I think that’s enough for one night. Head up topsides; let’s all get some sleep.”

“Music to my ears, Guv’ner,” Newkirk said, putting down his shovel with no reluctance whatsoever.

Hogan rolled his eyes, suddenly irritated. It had been a very long day. “For crying out loud. Would you knock it off with the ‘Guv’ner’ bit? You sound like the Artful Dodger.”

Newkirk recoiled. Stiffly, his diction crisp, he said, “I see, sir. My apologies, sir.”

“I realize that this isn’t exactly the usual sort of military situation, and I’m giving you fellows a long leash, but I do think I’m owed the courtesy of _some_ basic respect from my men.”

“Basic respect? _Basic bl…_ ” He caught himself midword, and snapped to attention as best he could, hunkered down as he was to fit in the tunnel. “Yes, sir. I understand, sir. I’m sorry, sir. Won’t happen again, sir. I give you my word on that. Sir.”

“Thank you, Newkirk. Why were you calling me that in the first place?”

He didn’t relax his posture a hair, nor did his enunciation falter, but his expression shifted, and there was a challenge in his eyes. “Well, sir. Permission to explain in a somewhat roundabout fashion?”

Hogan’s own eyes narrowed. “Go ahead.”

“Taking you as an example, you’re called ‘Hogan’ because your dad was, and you’re called ‘Robert’ because your mum said so. Perhaps your mates called you ‘Rob.’ And so forth. Those are names. Easily given, and easily changed, and it’s not my place to use any of them.” He took a breath. “Now, you’re my CO because London said so, and you’re ‘Colonel’ because your Army decided you were worth promoting. That could mean anything or nothing; I’ve no way of knowing by sight.”

“You’ve made no secret of your opinions of officers,” Hogan said coldly.

“No. I suppose I haven’t. I’ve met my share of fellows with rows of bright colored ribbons on their breast pockets and hearts like coal underneath them. But there it is. I can call you ‘Colonel’ because of that shiny eagle pin on your collar. I can call you ‘sir’ because all officers like it better when I do. Or maybe I can call you ‘Guv’ner’ because _I_ think you’re worth following. Those are titles, sir. Not names. Names are given. Titles have to be earned.” He saluted, crisp and correct. Even covered head to toe in sweat-matted dirt, he was suddenly every inch the perfect soldier. “Permission to return to the barracks, Colonel Hogan, sir?”

“…Permission granted,” Hogan said, and watched Newkirk crawl back along the newly excavated section of tunnel. He waited until the other man was well out of sight before slapping a hand to his forehead, furious with himself. One step forward, ten steps back; he’d just shot himself in the foot, and being exhausted and sore was no excuse. Rebuilding the trust he’d just blown sky-high could take weeks, and he didn’t have that kind of time to waste.

And of all the POWs he could have chosen to alienate, Newkirk was just about the worst choice possible. Love him or hate him, the prickly old-timer was at the beating heart of the stalag; he knew everyone, everyone knew him, he knew where all the metaphorical bodies were buried, and everyone owed him a favor or six. If he chose to make any public display of disillusionment with the Colonel and his grandiose, if admittedly unorthodox, plans, Hogan might find himself out of favor not merely with Newkirk, but with half the camp.

*.*.*.*.*.*

The next day was rainy. Torrentially rainy. ‘I just saw an old man leading pairs of animals into a big boat’ rainy. Naturally, Lange took the opportunity to call a special formation, which he oversaw from the safe shelter of the porch of the Kommandantur. This had the advantage of annoying, not merely the prisoners, who felt that most things Lange did, including continuing to breathe, skirted the edges of the Geneva Convention, but the guards, who were forced to trudge through the ankle-deep mud for a solid hour, counting and recounting them.

“This is cruel and unusual punishment,” grumbled a lanky newcomer, shifting his feet slightly. They squelched, but he had been captured recently enough that the boots were still in fairly good, nonleaky, condition. He didn’t yet know to appreciate that while it lasted, but then he’d only been in camp for about seven hours. He’d find out in his own time. “There’s got to be something in the Geneva Convention about that.”

“Forget it,” Newkirk muttered back. “Cruel, yes. Unusual, no. Pipe down.”

“They can’t _do_ this to us!”

“News to them. Now shut up!”

“We’ve got rights!”

“Do you _want_ the goons to break your nose?”

“No, but—!”

“Do you want _me_ to?”

“Take it easy, soldier,” Hogan cut in, as the guard let loose a torrent of angry German that boiled down to a forceful request for silence.

Newkirk shrugged acquiescence. The young sergeant hunched his shoulders under the reprimand, not quite sure which of them was the ‘soldier’ in question, but obediently falling silent until they were finally dismissed to the dubious shelter of the barracks.

“All right, lads,” Forrest said, with a rueful look at the ceiling. “Bucket patrol; you know the drill.”

The newcomer, who, in fact, had no idea what he was talking about, stood awkwardly in the middle of the room, trying not to get in anyone’s way as bowls, buckets, and LeBeau’s stewpot were placed, with mathematical exactitude, beneath the various leaks.

Newkirk walked over to the newcomer and casually wrung out his cap into the stewpot, eliciting an indignant yelp from LeBeau, which he ignored. “Right, then,” he said. “Olsen, wasn’t it?”

LeBeau watched the young American spend a frantic five seconds trying to decide whether or not admitting it would be a good idea. “Er, yes?”

He gave him a lazy smile, and slung a comradely arm over the other man’s shoulder. “Good. First thing you want to do is learn a bit about the guards. Schultzie’s one thing. You could get away with mouthing off to him. But Schmidt, the one who was counting us just now, really would punch you in the beak for making a fuss. And you can just thank your lucky stars it wasn’t Schwartz on duty today, or you’d still be on your hands and knees out there, looking for your teeth.”

Olsen opened his mouth, then shut it again. “Um… thanks. Which one is… ah, what’d you call him? Schultzie?”

“Schultz you cannot mistake,” LeBeau said. “He is the one who looks like an overinflated zeppelin wearing a gravy boat on his head.”

That surprised a laugh out of Olsen. “Okay, I’ll remember that.”

“Do so. We will point out the other guards as they come, and you will soon learn which ones not to provoke,” LeBeau said, with a sour look into his stewpot. There was already an inch of murky water at the bottom. “I hope no one was expecting much for dinner tonight.”

“You mean _besides_ the usual heartburn, right?” Newkirk gave Olsen a final pat on the back, and turned his attention to the Frenchman.

“ _I will give you something much worse than heartburn, you Philistine,_ ” LeBeau growled.

“You always do, Louie, you always do.”

As that little discussion hurtled towards its inevitable conclusion, Olsen backed slowly away, nonplussed. No one else in the barracks was paying any attention whatsoever to what sounded like the prelude to a homicide, or, for that matter, to one puzzled greenhorn, and he thought he might do better to keep it that way. He still wasn’t sure how much trouble he might be in as regarded his performance at roll call.

He backed up a step, than another, then turned to climb into his bunk, and found himself face-to-face with his commanding officer.

“Urk,” he said coherently.

“At ease, Sergeant,” Hogan said pleasantly. “Olsen, right? I’ve been meaning to welcome you to scenic Stalag 13.”

“Er, thank you, sir,” Olsen said. “And, sir, I’m really sorry about before. At the formation. I didn’t mean to make trouble, sir; I didn’t think…”

“No apologies necessary. Trouble aimed in the right direction is no trouble at all,” Hogan said with a smile. “You’ll get the hang of it soon enough.”

Olsen wondered if there was something about this bunk, this camp, or just captivity in general that drove people nutty. He hadn’t met a sane POW yet. Musing on that unappetizing thought, he completely failed to notice an exchange of meaningful glances—Hogan to Newkirk, LeBeau to Forrest, Forrest to Hogan—but the widening grin on the Colonel’s face was hard to miss. “In fact, Olsen, sometimes trouble—if correctly applied, of course—is a real help. We’ll talk more some other time, maybe.”

Later that afternoon, Hogan got a few more details. “He was clean, sir,” Newkirk said. “Nothing in his pockets but lint. Not even the usual beat-up snapshot of the girl back home. I wasn’t exactly expecting an Iron Cross and a code book, but even for a POW that’s pretty sparse equipment.”

“His uniform looked correct,” LeBeau added. “Of course, if he is a spy, he could have stolen it easily enough.”

“Problem is, he looked as though he understood when Schmidt was bawling us out, sir,” Newkirk said, seriously. “Not just the shouting; he looked like he understood the _words_.”

“Well, if that isn’t very suspicious, it could be very useful,” Hogan said. “But just in case it’s the former, we’ll keep an eye on him for a few days. He goes nowhere alone until I say the word, and no one is to mention tunnels in front of the new guy, all right?”

“We’ll see to it, Colonel,” Forrest promised.

Newkirk met his eye and nodded crisply. Not actually saluting, but not all that far off, either. “Yes, sir. He’s got himself a couple of new best mates, Colonel.”

“Good. Keep me posted,” Hogan said, nodding a dismissal.

Tunnel construction was being delayed _again_ until they vetted the new guy, who might or might not be a plant, the trick bottom of the footlocker in which they were storing the radio until such time as they were able to create a permanent installation was so utterly insecure that it was giving Hogan nightmares, he still didn’t know which—if any—of the other men were going to volunteer to stay, there was a new leak directly over his desk, and Newkirk’s spit-and-polish courtesy was making Hogan’s teeth itch.

Some good news right about now would not, he thought, come amiss.

*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*

Author’s note: The wisecrack about the likelihood of Hogan finding himself going a bit gray was demonstrably true. The last season or so saw the good Colonel’s hair silvering around the edges somewhat, but I suppose when the show lasts longer than the actual war, these things happen. Dr. Hawkeye Pierce could sympathize.

Sergeant Olsen, the ‘outside man,’ must, I assume, have spoken fluent German. All the characters’ proficiency in the language seems to have been sort of mutable; they spoke exactly enough German to suit any given storyline. Oy. I hereby decree that Olsen speaks it like a native, and did even before his capture.

Hogan’s still having a few growing pains. Commanding a bomber squadron is nice, of course, but I do suspect that it isn’t the best possible preparation for commanding an intelligence unit, especially not one filled with wire-happy paranoiacs. But he’s trying, the poor guy, he’s trying.


	26. Chapter 26

The rain didn’t let up for another two days. Between the discomfort of perpetually moist clothing and the boredom of what was, to all intents and purposes, confinement to quarters, the fraying of every temper in the camp should not have been surprising. It was no novelty for Newkirk and LeBeau to argue, either amongst themselves or with anyone else who wandered into the blast radius, and for the most part the others were able to tune it out. When Forrest began to snap at Richmond, though, it was far more unusual, and when Kinch the levelheaded picked a fight with Foxton the unassuming, several of the men wanted to submit the incident to Ripley’s Believe it or Not.

The new guy, Olsen, continued to be new. Which is to say that he stumbled around, breaking unwritten rules, getting in everyone’s way and on everyone’s nerves, doing his very best to pretend that he wasn’t scared, and not fooling anyone for a minute.

Something went wrong with the stove, or more precisely the stovepipe; it began belching clouds of black unpleasantness into the room, thickly enough that they could—and did—play naughts and crosses in the soot coating the tabletop. They had no alternative but to leave the stove unlit unless and until they were given the tools and the permission to dismantle and repair it; soot was messy and irritating, but carbon monoxide could easily kill them all. So there was definitely no cooking being done, and even the coffeepot was empty and cold.

No coffee. Even the wretched ersatz coffee they could scrounge, of which the best that could be said was that it was marginally better than nothing, was the lifeblood of the barracks. They drank it to wake up in the mornings, to warm up during the day, to relax in the evenings, and to feel normal at any time. If they were frightened, lonely, happy, bored, sad, contemplative, angry, or sick, they drank coffee. It was a lot to ask from bitter brown water, but it was all they had. And now they didn’t even have that.

More than a few of the men had been heard to wonder if living without coffee—and living _with_ a Cockney in the throes of caffeine withdrawal—was better or worse than quietly suffocating in their sleep. Hawkins made a comment or two about the virtues of splitting the difference and strangling the Cockney. It didn’t improve the atmosphere in the barracks.

LeBeau resented the forced inactivity; it was leaving him far too much time to think about Hogan’s proposal. There hadn’t been a single element in it he liked. Staying here? Sending other men back to the fight while he lingered behind? How could he bear to do that? France needed her loyal sons to protect her, preserve her. She needed them all. She needed him.

Hogan’s plans were quite literally unbelievable. Impossible. They would require a battalion of specially trained agents, to say nothing of the personal intervention of every angel in heaven. They couldn’t possibly work. Which was the problem; they would have been glorious.

If they could be _made_ to work, they would _be_ glorious.

France needed glorious plans like the colonel’s.

But LeBeau was no kind of spy. He was a chef who had been assigned to a bomber and trained to use a gun. If he stayed here, what could he do? Bake secret messages into a tray of petit fours? He would be useless. He liked that least of all.

Newkirk was sitting at the table shuffling his battered deck of cards; LeBeau sat glumly down across from him. Newkirk bridged the deck, let the cards hiss neatly into a stack. “Gin? Or poker?” he asked. “You look like you could use a distraction from whatever it is you’re fretting about.”

“I could indeed,” LeBeau. “But not cards.”

“Fair enough,” Newkirk said, and set the deck aside. “What’s eating you, mate?”

“A great many bugs,” LeBeau said bitterly, scratching at that terrible spot between his shoulder blades, the one that nobody can ever quite reach for themselves.

“We _are_ about due for another delousing,” Newkirk said, and scratched his own shoulder, because it is not physically possible to see someone else itching without feeling one’s own skin start to crawl. “Always good for a laugh, that is.”

LeBeau made an untranscribable but unmistakably grumpy sound. “ _Ah, ciel_. Picture my delight.”

“Now, now, mustn’t grumble; what we lose in dignity we gain in chemical burns,” Newkirk said mock-soothingly.

“Very funny,” LeBeau said. Stalag 13 had already cost him more of his dignity than he liked to think about. “Pierre… have you thought about what _le colonel_ said? About… staying?”

“Not an easy thing to forget, is it?” Newkirk evaded the question. “That what’s got you all in a lather, then?”

“ _Oui._ I do not know what I want to do, or what would be best to do. I would be only too happy to sabotage the _Boche_ , but I do not see exactly how I could be much help,” LeBeau said.

“What a chap would like doesn’t often have much to do with what _is_ , far as I’ve ever seen,” Newkirk said. “The Colonel was talking about setting up an escape. If he’s offering, I think you should take the ticket out of here.”

LeBeau blinked. That had certainly been definite enough. “You think so? You think _le colonel’s_ plans will not work?”

“Didn’t say that. From what I’ve seen of the man, I’d go so far as to say that if anyone _could_ run a game on the Krauts from inside the wire, it would be our lad Hogan. But I’ll tell you what I told him; soon or late, it’ll all end in hemp.”

“You did not! I cannot believe you would actually… no. I _do_ believe you would say such a thing to an officer,” LeBeau said. “ _Mon Dieu._ What did he say to that?”

Newkirk snorted. “Told me we were far more likely to be shot than hanged. Reassuring, what? Didn’t get angry, though, if that’s what you’re really asking.”

“You always have better luck than you deserve. Most officers would have been very annoyed,” LeBeau said.

“That’s me. Lady Luck’s favorite son,” Newkirk said. “But that’s neither here nor there. Do you really want to stay in this pesthole and wait for the SS to catch up with you?”

LeBeau sighed. “ _Non._ Of course I want to get out of here. I want to smash the _Boche_ in any way I can. That is the problem, _n’est ce pas?_ Where would I be most valuable? As an airman in a bomber, or a chef in a spy ring?”

“You’d be an asset wherever you went,” Newkirk said. “But I’m telling you, mate—go home. Go be an asset someplace where they feed you regular and don’t use barbed wire for wall art.”

“Perhaps you are right,” LeBeau said, trying very hard to be convinced. “I will not miss stale bread and sauerkraut, I can say that much.”

“Can’t imagine you’ll have any fond memories of the delousing station, either. To say nothing of roll call in the rain, icy showers in January, lumpy mattresses year-round, or the cooler,” Newkirk said with a quirked eyebrow. “Not exactly the sort of thing they make picture postcards of.”

Perhaps there were no postcards, but he had found at least one thing of surpassing value in the cooler, LeBeau thought sentimentally, thinking of language lessons shouted through a cement wall. “No. There are a great many things I would like to forget about this place. But there are also many things I will always remember.”

“A good psychologist should be able to clear that up for you,” Newkirk said. “Or better yet—a glass or two of wine, a couple of croissants, a pretty mademoiselle, and this rattrap will never cross your mind again. And good riddance to bad memories.”

“I suppose you are going home as well? Warm beer, boiled mutton, and a sweet English rose?”

Right; this was going to be the tricky bit. He could already tell that this was not going to go over well. “No, worse luck,” he said. “I’m not going to escape, Louie. I’m staying here.”

LeBeau stared at him. “ _Are you completely insane? Why in the name of everything holy would you want to stay here? You just finished telling me all the reasons that we should go!”_

“English, mate. Speak English. And it’s not a matter of _wanting_ to stop here; you know me better than that. I told you the reasons you should go, and I stand by them. I just think it would be better all for all concerned if I stay behind.”

LeBeau took a deep breath, but before he could demolish that argument, Newkirk held up a hand. “Wait, Louie. Hear me out. It’s… say I did get out. Say we all made it back. What then? I’d retrain for a few weeks and go back to dropping bombs on the Krauts, right?”

“And you do not want to return to the fight?” LeBeau genuinely could not comprehend such an attitude. Especially not from Newkirk. “You do not want to give the _Boche_ what they deserve?”

“That’s just it,” Newkirk said. “What I could do in the air… it was good work, don’t get me wrong, but the RAF’s got no shortage of men what could do the same or better. Colonel Hogan, now—where is he going to find someone else with the sort of talents I’ve got?”

There was, for once, no braggadocio in his voice. He was a skilled thief, and they both knew it. It was simply a fact, as much a part of him as his eyes or his accent. He wasn’t ashamed of it. Theft, as a career path, offered very little by way of long-term stability, (almost as little as espionage, come to think of it,) but he hadn’t exactly been overwhelmed with better opportunities. It might not have been legal, or moral, or particularly smart, or a good way to reach old age, but he had done the best he could with what he had, and he felt that he’d done it for the right reasons. He had no apologies to offer.

Nonetheless, if there was some sort of angelic copper looking over his admittedly extensive charge sheet, an idea he didn’t really believe but couldn’t quite dismiss out of hand, there was no guarantee that the divine magistrate could be made to see things that way. The Eighth Commandment just didn’t have a whole lot of wiggle room. The war, though… he wasn’t sure of much, but he had no doubt that saving the world from the goose-steppers counted as a good thing. This might be his one chance to balance the scales, at least a little bit, and he owed it to himself to take it.

And, leaving self-interest out of it, there was the other side of it, too. Hogan wanted a thief to accomplish the sort of things he claimed he’d been sent there to do. The stakes being what they were, he needed the best he could get, and, false modesty be damned, unless and until a better candidate presented himself, that was Newkirk. One could even make the argument that he owed it to the entire free world to be Hogan’s thief.

“So you are trying to get me out of the way before you begin? Is this your tactful way of saying that you think I would be useless?” LeBeau wasn’t sure if he was angry, hurt, or something even darker.

“More like a tactful way of trying to get you to safety before you end up kicking the wind alongside us,” Newkirk snapped back. “Sorry if that offends you. Oh, wait. No, I’m not.”

“I am not a child! I do not need you protecting me like one!”

“If you’re not a child, then leave off the ruddy temper tantrums! Look—you asked me a question, and I told you the truth. _This is suicide_. I’m gambling that I can do more good in however many weeks we might have before they catch us than I could in however long I might last in whatever plane I’m reassigned to. I wasn’t much of a loss to the RAF, I just might be some help to the Colonel, and it’s pretty much a bleeding coin flip either way! If you want to get stroppy about it, go do it somewhere else. Like London; it’s nice this time of year.”

The problem, LeBeau thought, was that Newkirk divided the world into two types of people. There were the ones he took care of, and there were the ones who wanted to hurt him. The categories weren’t mutually exclusive; they could and did overlap, but there was no third option. He forced his voice into a calmer register, and shunted the conversation in a slightly different direction. “Have you spoken with any of the others about this?”

“Not really. Overheard a few bits and pieces. I’m pretty sure that Richmond wants no part of anything that means staying here; he wants to get on with digging so he can get on with leaving. Forrest’s a bit unhappy about where the whole idea stands in regard to the Geneva Convention; no telling what he’ll finally decide. Kinch is focusing on making that radio work; I don’t know what he wants to do once that’s sorted.”

“And if any of them were to ask for your opinion…?”

“…I’d tell them the same thing I told you. _Go home_. This isn’t the sort of thing you get two tries to master, and Forrest isn’t wrong about the Geneva Convention. What the Colonel wants to do will strip us of what few rights we’ve still got.”

“If you are so certain that this is a bad idea, why are you staying?”

“I already told you. I think I’d be of more use to the Colonel than the RAF. It really isn’t any more complicated than that.”

“Ah, how very heroic. _Vive la liberte_ , eh?” LeBeau’s raised eyebrow spoke volumes; it was a great deal more complicated than that, and he knew it, and Newkirk knew that he knew it.

There was never any use arguing with that eyebrow. Newkirk sighed, gave in. “Look, Louie. I’m willing to take the gamble. For one thing, I have the right curriculum vitae, and for another, I _don’t_ have much left to lose.”

“Nothing to lose? What of your family? Your sister?”

“Mavis is probably dead,” Newkirk said bluntly. “We lived in Stepney. Which, for the most part, isn’t there anymore. A lot can happen in the better part of three years.”

LeBeau frowned. “Dramatics again. You do not know that she is not perfectly fine. If we were given our mail, there is every chance you would hear as much.”

“And if I had wheels, there’s every chance I’d be a jeep and could take you all for a spin. Enough with the maybes and might’ves, Louie. There’s work for me to do in this pit. I’m going to do it. If Hogan’s willing to offer you your freedom, mate, for God’s sake, _take it_ , and go find work for yourself back in the real world.”

LeBeau wondered, not for the first time, if Newkirk genuinely didn’t realize that other people were capable of compassion, or, as seemed more likely, if he was simply unable to understand that anyone could ever care about _him_. “And if they were not maybes? If you knew she was at home waiting and worrying about you? What then, _mon ami,_ what then?”

“Then every day I can shorten this sodding war is one less day she’s got to worry.” He shrugged. “Louie, what do you want from me? There’s never going to be a better chance for me to be a real part of ending this war. Never.”

“Perhaps not,” LeBeau said. “What _le Colonel_ is describing… it could make all the difference. It could.” He paused. The choice on the tip of his tongue, he vaguely understood, had been made a long time ago, but this was the first time he was going to speak it aloud, let it become irrevocable. “That is why I am staying, too. I may not have your gift for locked doors, but I can learn. We are still _les Mousquetaires, oui?_ All for one, one for all. Except that now ‘all’ is bigger than one barracks, bigger than one camp. Bigger than even just _la Belle France_. If we can shorten this war by even a day, it will be worth whatever else may happen to us.”

Newkirk looked at him, then shook his head. “We’re both ‘round the bend, aren’t we?”

LeBeau laughed; counterintuitively enough, with the decision made, it felt as though a weight had suddenly lifted from his shoulders. “We have been for a very long time, _mon pote_. A very, very long time!”

Newkirk grinned. This hadn’t worked out at all like he’d planned, and in a way he was sorry for that. He had wanted LeBeau to go, to be safe and free and elsewhere. He had wanted that for LeBeau’s sake. For his own… he was shamefully grateful that the best friend he had ever had or hoped for would still be at his side. “Truer words. Mad as hatters, the both of us. We just won’t tell anyone.”

“Not even _le Colonel,_ eh?”

“ _Especially_ not him. We won’t have to; volunteering for this merry band is proof enough of it. Besides. Who came up with the idea in the first place? He’s madder than both of us put together!”


	27. Chapter 27

Later that evening, a couple of men were sitting around the table playing cards for matchsticks. Olsen had a respectable pile in front of him, which meant that Newkirk was either running some sort of angle or losing his touch. Kinch wandered over to the table anyway.

“What are the stakes?” he asked, watching LeBeau fold a busted straight. Forrest’s cards were already face down on the table. Yep. It was an angle, all right.

“Why, Sergeant Kinchloe, I’m surprised at you,” Newkirk said mock-reproachfully. “This here’s a friendly game, it is. You know as well as I do that playing for money is—what is it, lads?”

“ **Verboten!** ” said Richmond, LeBeau, and Forrest in singsong unison.

“Quite right. And anyone caught gambling in clear defiance of the rules will get…?”

“ **Thirty days in the cooler!** ” the chorus answered, still in German.

“You’re right! _Now_ I remember. How silly of me,” Kinch said, sitting down. “So what’s the buy-in?”

Newkirk tsked. “Shame on you, setting a bad example for our young friend here. **Now Olsen, don’t you go letting Kinch lead you into mischief. Verstehen Sie?** ”

“ **I won’t, thanks** ,” Olsen said, studying his cards one last time. Shaking his head, he folded, leaving Newkirk to sweep the matches into his own pot. “ **I can get into plenty of mischief on my own.”**

Forrest dug a handful of matches out of their box and handed them to Kinch. “Your German’s pretty good, Olsen,” he said casually. All right, then; Olsen had officially admitted to being fluent in German, and there would be no walking that back. If that had been a slip, he’d learn something from the kid’s reaction to the cock-up. If it hadn’t been, it was one less thing they had to worry about.

“Huh? Oh. Thanks. My grandma was from Germany, and she taught me some when I was a kid. It’s come in pretty handy over here,” Olsen said, counting what remained in his pile of matches with a slight frown.

“I imagine it would,” Kinch said. “Deal me in, Pete. So, Olsen, did your CO make use of your language skills?”

“Only once,” Olsen said with a rueful grin. “After that he knew better. We’d met these pretty frauleins on leave, you see, and he asked me to make the introductions, and, well, we’d had a few drinks by that point. And I kind of thought it would be funny if I, um, got a little creative with my translations, and, ah…”

“Don’t tell me. She slapped him silly?”

“And how. I think she was actually Max Schmeling in a dress. He fell flat on his caboose. And his hat ended up halfway across the room in a puddle of spilled beer,” he said. “I was on KP for a month. Actually, if I hadn’t been captured, I’d _still_ be on KP. Silver linings, I guess.”

Newkirk snorted. “You must really hate KP if this dump seemed like the better alternative.”

Olsen made a face. “Hey, I’m just trying to look on the bright side.”

“Don’t bother. Newkirk doesn’t even admit that bright sides exist,” Richmond advised, and tossed away three cards. Another spectacular poker hand in the making. There was probably a good reason that they always let the man with the quickest fingers and fewest scruples be dealer, he thought. And perhaps someday he’d figure out just what that reason might be.

“Seeing is believing, mate. When I _see_ one, I’ll believe it,” Newkirk said, dealing him three new ones. They weren’t much of an improvement on the ones he’d originally discarded.

“I’ll take one,” Olsen said. “I don’t know. I guess I’d rather—”

Just what he would rather was never to be known; just at that moment the door opened, letting in two men from Barracks Seven, newly released from a week spent listening to their fingernails grow in solitary. One of them made a beeline for the table. “…Olsen? Hey, Olsen, is that you?”

“Barrie? What the— God, it’s good to see a familiar face,” said Olsen. They embraced, with a good bit of back slapping.

“Apparently they are total strangers,” LeBeau told Newkirk.

“Must be,” Newkirk said. “Only logical conclusion.”

Barrie laughed. “We went to high school together. I had the biggest crush on his sister…!”

“I put a stop to that pretty darned quick, I can tell you that,” Olsen said, laughing too.

Forrest abandoned a not-quite-full house. “I think I’ve had enough bad luck for one night,” he said, getting up from the table and shoving what remained of his matchsticks back into the box.

“Well, tomorrow is another day,” Newkirk said. “Let’s see now. Carry the four… that’s twelve thousand, four hundred and eighteen pounds you owe me. I’ll just add it to your tab, shall I?”

“Twelve thousand…! I thought you said this was just a friendly game!” said Olsen.

“And so it is,” Newkirk said. “We’re all friends, aren’t we?”

Olsen’s eyes were the size of saucers as he looked from Newkirk’s grin—showing just a few teeth too many to be classified as entirely friendly—to his own, much diminished, pile of matches. “Twelve thousand pounds? What’s that in real money?”

Barrie, Kinch and LeBeau thought that was funny; judging by the expressions on their faces, none of the RAF flyers did. “That would be twelve thousand, four hundred and eighteen pounds in ‘real money,’ thanks kindly, Yank,” Newkirk said. “Shall we take a look at _your_ tab, while we’re at it?”

“And would you like to hear it in dollars, Reichsmarks, or pounds?” Kinch asked.

“I don’t… but I… I don’t even know how much is _in_ a pound,” Olsen said, his voice scaling upwards by the moment.

“Sixteen ounces,” said LeBeau.

Even the Brits thought _that_ one was funny, and, while everyone else was mock-helpfully introducing Olsen to the wonderful world of non-decimalized currency, complete with the slang terms for the various denominations, Forrest slipped away from the table and made his way towards Hogan’s office.

He thought that Olsen had now been pretty thoroughly identified, and two days of shadowing him had produced nothing more incriminating than a prolonged excavation of a blocked nostril when he thought no one was watching. (Newkirk, when reporting the incident, had claimed that Olsen had been in there up to the second knuckle. They took that with their customary grain of salt, but on the off chance Newkirk wasn’t exaggerating, several men found themselves wondering if Olsen might do it again.)

In any case, Olsen was probably not a German plant. Just another American POW, albeit one who lacked a handkerchief, and no threat, so long as he washed his hands before interacting with anyone else. With any luck, that meant that Hogan would let them resume tunneling. Forrest knocked at Hogan’s office door to convey the news.

Forrest still hadn’t quite decided what he thought about Hogan’s plan. It was espionage, plain and simple, and the Geneva Convention was very clear on the subject. Forrest didn’t much favor the idea of being shot as a spy, of course, no one would, but, frankly, he wasn’t sure he liked the idea of working as a spy any better. It wasn’t even the risk that was bothering him; no one could possibly be thick enough to enlist in the military, in wartime, without at least considering the likelihood of being shot and killed. He’d accepted that as a possibility, a long time ago. And after his capture, he’d accepted it all over again.

But spying…? No. He wanted to fight, but not like that. He wanted to face his enemies openly, honorably. War was not glorious, God knew he’d learned that quickly enough, but he didn’t care about the sort of honor and glory that other people could see. He did, however, care about his own self-perception, and the deception and underhandedness of intelligence work disturbed him. If that made him a coward or a hypocrite, well, that was a pity. But it wasn’t something he could change.

Hogan opened his door, waved Forrest in. “Hello, Sergeant. What can I do for you?”

“Just reporting in, sir,” Forrest said. “Olsen’s having a reunion with an old school friend. Corporal Barrie. From over in Seven, via the cooler, which is why it took them this long to meet. Unless Barrie’s also secretly German, I’d say that Olsen’s been fairly well vouched for.”

“Good,” Hogan said. “That means we can get back to work… and tell Newkirk he can stop playing nursemaid. At least until the next greenhorn shows up, anyway.”

“He’ll be glad to hear it,” Forrest said, with a faint smile. “If nothing else, letting Olsen win at cards must be driving the poor fellow ‘round the twist.”

Hogan chuckled. “Maybe I’ll wait another couple of days before telling him he can go back to taking the men for everything they’re worth. But that’s not really what you came in here to tell me, is it?”

Forrest closed his eyes briefly. “No, sir; I suppose it isn’t.”

“I smell bad news on the way,” Hogan said.

Forrest squared his shoulders. “I…sir…”

“You’re here about volunteering for my crew,” Hogan said, and paused just long enough to watch Forrest flinch. “Specifically, you’re here to tell me you want no part of it. Am I right?”

Forrest swallowed. “I’m afraid so, sir. I don’t feel I would have much to contribute to an operation like the one you’ve described.”

“I think you underestimate yourself. But I appreciate your honesty, and I respect your decision. Just two more things; naturally, you understand that everything you’ve seen or heard is to be treated as top secret. As in, you don’t mention this to anyone. Ever.”

“Yes, sir,” Forrest said. “I do understand that, sir.”

“Good. The other thing is this. The escape I’m planning is going to be a big one. I don’t have a final roster yet, but it’ll probably end up being something like a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty men, in several groups. Would you be interested in commanding one of those groups?”

“Me, sir? Command?”

“Yup. I’ve seen the way you run this barracks. You’re good with people, and you can keep your head in a crisis. If you’d been interested in staying, I’d’ve been happy to have you. As it is, I can’t think of anyone better suited to get the men to safety. Think it over, will you?”

Forrest saluted, relieved and thrilled in roughly equal measure. Hogan had taken his refusal with far better grace than he had been expecting; therein lay the relief. And thrilled was self-explanatory; it looked as though the escape was really going to happen, and presumably soon. And what an escape it would be! A hundred, or a hundred and fifty men… it was almost too much to take in. Almost too much to believe. If Hogan could really accomplish such a miracle, what else might he manage down the line?

He looked around the barracks as he stepped back inside, completely astonished to realize that he was almost reluctant to miss whatever else the Yank might have up his sleeve. _Almost_ reluctant. Not enough to change his mind. But almost.

As he walked back to the table, the others were finishing up a rough back-of-the-envelope calculation, converting matchsticks to pounds to dollars. The resulting total was more inflammatory than the matches had been.

“Six hundred and eighty-three dollars?” Olsen squeaked. “Where the hell am I supposed to come up with that kind of money?”

“Cheer up,” Kinch said. “You’re not officially part of the Stalag 13 family until Newkirk’s holding a marker on you for your life savings, firstborn child, and your granny’s life insurance. Just think of it as part of the induction process.”

Olsen made a face. “Yeah, well, my granny doesn’t _have_ life insurance, and I don’t even have a girlfriend anymore, let alone a firstborn child. So what then, Corporal Card Sharp?”

“Trade in kind. Six hundred dollars, eh?” LeBeau shrugged. “Perhaps a pack of cigarettes. More like half a pack.”

“Oh, not even,” Richmond said. “That’s—at _most_ —a chore swap. Take garbage detail in his place one day.”

“Or you could always do what the rest of us do,” Forrest offered.

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“Absolutely nothing,” said LeBeau. “All those markers are to be paid after the war, and once we are liberated, he will never be able to find us to collect. Problem solved. I’m tired of poker. How about a few rounds of euchre?”

“Fine by me, mate. I imagine all that losing _does_ get tiresome.” Newkirk bridged the cards and let them hiss neatly into place. “Keep your hair on, Olsen. It’s all in good fun. If I thought I’d ever _really_ be able to collect from these deadbeats, I’d be a lot more careful about actually keeping records of who owes me what.”

“He might cheat less, too,” said Kinch.

“No, he wouldn’t,” said Richmond.

“You see the abuse I have to take? How is it my fault that none of you can play cards worth a damn?” Newkirk dealt out the cards, keeping one eye on Olsen and the other on Forrest. The barracks chief looked… at peace. He’d come to some sort of conclusion, and it didn’t take a genius to guess what about.

All things considered, Newkirk thought, he’d miss the bloke.

*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*

Author’s note: Max Schmeling was a famous and successful German boxer. If he punched you, you’d probably be lucky if the worst thing that happened to you was having to retrieve your hat from a puddle of beer. Also, there’s no evidence that he ever wore a dress, so the chances are that Olsen and his luckless CO simply met a young woman with a good right hook and a disinclination to take any crap from mildly intoxicated airmen. And good for her, say I.

I’ll rather miss Forrest myself, but since there was never, to my knowledge, a character of that name on the program, it’s either send him home or get him killed. And Hogan really does need someone of his caliber to keep the escape on track once they were past the point where Hogan could supervise it in person.


	28. Chapter 28

It finally stopped raining sometime that night; the next morning was about as bright and beautiful as Stalag 13 ever got. Lange, who never missed an opportunity to ruin a good thing for everyone if he could possibly help it, announced a full-scale inspection for the following morning. All bedding was to be freshly aired, all clothing was to be laundered and folded neatly into footlockers, all surfaces were to be scrubbed, every floor swept clean, the sooty grime was to be entirely removed from every conceivable surface, and so forth. Any deviations from perfection would, naturally, bring severe punishment.

Everyone from Lange on down knew that, once the bedding was freshly aired, etc, it would be torn from the beds and searched with a bayonet, that the lockers would be dumped onto the floor and their contents trampled, that the barracks would be an utter shambles afterwards, and that no matter how clean the barracks had been, Lange would find reasons to punish them anyway. He would make some up if he had to. These inspections always meant a full day of cleaning beforehand, a day of standing around watching helplessly as their possessions were devastated, and, usually, two or three days spent repairing the damage afterwards. It was quite the morale-booster.

...For the Krauts.

“Why am I doing this?” Newkirk asked the world at large, wringing out his cleaning rag. “Why didn’t I do the smart thing and punch Jager in the beak when he announced this bleeding inspection?”

“Because he would have killed you,” Kinch said, and grimaced. A dead mouse is unpleasant. A dead mouse lying directly beneath a man’s bunk is outright appalling. He picked it up by the tail and threw it into the trash can.

“Maybe. More likely I would’ve just gotten myself a nice quiet couple of days in the cooler. By the time they let me out, our jolly little bungalow would’ve been back to its usual squalor, and I wouldn’t be looking like a coal miner just off shift.” Newkirk had somehow drawn the job of cleaning out the potbellied stove, and was busily snaking out the malfunctioning stovepipe. The results were predictable. Kinch bit his lip before the smirk could escape.

“Oh, quit complaining. After we scrub the floor, we can hose you down, too,” Kinch said, and glanced across the compound. A few of the men were trying to return the bedding to its original dingy gray, as opposed to the dingy charcoal gray it had become after absorbing several pounds of soot. They didn’t seem to be having much luck, but being handed a carpet beater and instructed to let out all their accumulated frustrations was usually a welcome diversion. And there was an unspoken rule that one did not listen to the muttered imprecations that usually accompanied the vicious beatings, or at least not the parts that didn’t refer to Germans.

“Charming,” Newkirk said. “Using the same scrubbing brushes, I imagine. You’re too good to me.”

“Unless you’d rather we try the same carpet beaters they’re using for the blankets,” Kinch said, and was rewarded with a snort and an eye roll. “Don’t let me influence your decision one way or the other, but you’ve won an awful lot of poker pots recently. And by ‘recently’ I mean ‘since I’ve met you.’”

“I assumed that’s why I got saddled with this little chore in the first place,” said Newkirk. “Forrest does the assignments; perhaps I should start arranging for him to win once in a while. But at any rate, if it means we can start making coffee again, I suppose it’s worth a stint of playing chimney sweep.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Kinch. “I think I just heard you look on the bright side of something. The world’s probably coming to an end.”

“Figures the world would come to an end before this ruddy war does.”

“…And we’re back to normal. But actually… speaking of the war coming to an end. If you don’t mind my asking, what did you think of the Colonel’s idea?”

“I thought it sounded like a very efficient way to get ourselves shot. Why? What did you think?”

“I… I’m not sure,” Kinch said. “I mean, it sounded fantastic. Obviously, I hope he can pull it off. I’d like to be involved.”

“But?”

“But I’m not sure the Colonel would have any use for me. I’m not going to be anyone’s first choice for this kind of thing, and I don’t really fit in with the rest of you.”

“Whyever not?”

Kinch sighed. “Come on, Pete. Do I _look_ German to you?”

“No, but I’d rather think that the trick of being a good spy is not getting seen,” Newkirk said. “And you _sound_ German enough for anyone.”

“Is that supposed to be an insult or a compliment?”

“Not entirely sure, come to that. But in any case, you’re right; you’d be better off going home. Get back into the war if you want to, but do it the right way around.”

“The right way around. That’s a laugh,” said Kinch. “The army was—barely—willing to take me as cannon fodder, but anything more than that gave them a real bellyache.”

Newkirk gave him a quizzical look through a layer of soot. “And yet I can’t help but notice that you’ve a bit more embroidery on your sleeves than I do on mine. I’ve had worse bellyaches.”

“I _earned_ those stripes, fair and square,” said Kinch. He sounded defensive. That was because he was _feeling_ defensive. He _had_ earned them. He’d earned them by being twice as good as any white airman, and four times as good as most of them. And while he liked many of the men he’d met here in camp, he couldn’t help recognizing that he was quite a bit smarter than quite a lot of them.

 _He_ recognized that. The ones he’d come to regard as friends—which, yes, included Newkirk—recognized that. There were more than a couple of men here in camp who, he knew, did not. Would Hogan? Even if he did, would he be willing to gamble that integration wouldn’t cause more trouble than Kinch’s very real intelligence would be worth? Would his superiors back at High Command?

“Never said otherwise,” said Newkirk. “Nor thought so, either. Point is, you earned them doing your job. Go back to doing your job, you might just get a few more of them.”

“Fat chance of that. I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but you can’t know what it’s like for someone like me, Newkirk. Being a second class citizen doesn’t really lend itself to advancing through the ranks. You’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.”

“No, of course not. No idea at all. What could the likes of me possibly know about being looked down on? About being treated like dirt, because, so far as they’re concerned, I _am_ dirt? No, certainly never had _that_ little experience.” He wrung out his rag again. “Aside from every day of my life, of course.”

“It’s not the same, and you know it,” Kinch said, stung.

“It’s exactly the same,” Newkirk said. “Maybe on your side of the pond they think you can know if a man’s worth anything by looking at him. But on our side, they know by listening. One dropped ‘H’ and you’re done for.”

“Yes, and you can sound like an Oxford don if you want to. I’ve heard you do it! I can’t just switch back and forth the way you can, Newkirk. It’s easy for you; _your_ army isn’t segregated. Nobody’s afraid to let _you_ come near them.”

“No, I’m sure they just clutch their bags a bit tighter for the added warmth,” Newkirk said. “Segregated or not, a lad from the East End is going to have a rougher time of it than one from the playing fields of Eton. That’s just the way it is.”

“All right,” Kinch conceded. “Still, you’ve got a pretty unique set of qualifications for this kind of job. I worry that I… wouldn’t really be part of the team. There are a lot of people who wouldn’t want to work with me.”

“What, like that tosser Randall and his mates? Do me a favor! You think that those are the sort of folks we’d want working with _us_?”

“Us, huh? You’ve already talked to the Colonel about this?” Kinch felt the strangest twinge of jealousy. “He already asked you to join up?”

Newkirk shrugged. “Not exactly. He asked me a question or two, right enough, but I wouldn’t say it was quite so chummy as all that. No, it was just that, before he could see his way clear to letting me stay in prison, he had to convince himself that prison isn’t where I belong. Our commanding officer likes my ten magic fingers well enough, but he wasn’t all that certain about the man attached to them. Probably still isn’t. But then, who could blame him for that, eh?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about being asked in so many words whether I’m _just_ a sneak thief, or if I'm a rapist in my spare time. Or a murderer.” Newkirk’s face was expressionless. “Tell me some more about how easy I have it. I always did like fairy tales.”

"...Oh." Kinch didn’t quite know what to say to that. Finally, opting for a bit of gallows humor on the grounds that it usually worked pretty well, he said, “Just out of curiosity… are you?”

“If after knowing me this long you still need to ask, there’s no point in me telling you one way or the other. Look, Kinch. You’re a good enough mate that I’d like to see you out of here, all right? But if you’re barmy enough to consider staying, then talk to the Colonel about it before you decide. Don’t just go getting the wind up based on what you think he might say, or what you imagine someone else in the outfit might think, because that’s not just being crazy, it’s being _stupid_.”

“…You’re probably right,” said Kinch.

“Of course I am,” said Newkirk. “When am I not?”

“Don’t make me answer that one, all right? Neither of us will end up happy.”

“Unhappy? In a stalag? Now you’re just being silly.”

“Crazy, stupid, and now silly. I’m having one hell of a day,” said Kinch, leaning on his broom. “I think I _will_ talk to the Colonel. The worst that can happen is that he says I’m no use to him and tells me to escape.”

“Now _there’s_ a bright side worth looking at, mate.”

“Twice in one day. I’m impressed. You know, Newkirk, I’m beginning to think you’re not as much of a pessimist as you let on.”

“Well, perhaps you lot’ve been a bad influence on me. Just don’t go spreading it around. I’ve got a reputation to think of, you know,” said Newkirk, giving the stove one final swipe of the rag.

Kinch chuckled. “My lips are sealed; don’t worry. I’m good at keeping secrets.”

“Yes, well. If we’re to be spies, mate, we’d bloody well _better_ be.”

*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*

The inspection went pretty much as expected. The best thing about it, as Richmond pointed out, was that there would probably not be another one for at least a month. Forrest had disagreed; the best thing, so far as he was concerned, had been Lange’s failure to find the tunnel or any of the other shoot-on-sight contraband they had squirreled away in some rather ingenious nooks and hiding spots. LeBeau said that if they were looking for things to be happy about, the inspection had given them the opportunity to repair the stove, and now he could cook again. Newkirk said that if his fixing the stove was going to lead to the infliction of sauce béarnaise on the rest of them, he would begin distributing his written apologies as soon as he could steal enough writing paper. Olsen, who was beginning to get into the swing of things in Stalag 13, said that Newkirk already had enough things to apologize for, béarnaise sauce or no béarnaise sauce, that there might not be enough paper in Germany to suffice. And life went on.

*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*

Swing the pick. Shovel whatever was loosened into the bucket. Hammer another support into place. When the bucket was full, pass it back, get an empty one in exchange. Spit the dust from the back of your throat. Chip away at the rock-hard dirt. Wipe the sweat from your face. Look nervously at the roof of the tunnel; pray if you have the inclination. Swing the pick again. And again. And again.

Hour after hour after day after day, they worked in shifts, making their inexorable way towards the treeline. Some of them dared to hope that this time— _this time_ —they’d make it out, make it home. Some of them did their best to smother that mocking hope, too afraid of seeing it dashed. And one by one, as the tunnel edged outwards and onwards, they made up their minds. The ones who decided that they were willing to stay made peace with the fact that the tunnel was not for them; the ones who accepted that they needed to go tried to forgive themselves for leaving comrades and brothers behind. One by one, they caught Hogan’s eye, drew him aside for a few quiet words, and answered his questions. One by one, he shook their hands and entered their names in the appropriate lists.

And the tunnel stretched ever further into the distance. Inch by inch. Shovelful by shovelful. Prayer by prayer.

It was Richmond who actually broke through, and all he could do was stare at the sliver of sky as sunlight— _free_ sunlight—met his eyes for the first time in a little over two years. Two years. It was July of 1942, and he was peering through a crack in the earth, looking out over a stretch of land that was not hemmed in with barbed wire, and, just for a moment, his vision blurred with unshed tears.

The mad impulse to swing the pick that one final time, to break the last barrier keeping him in Hell, and to run, just run, washed over him like too many shots of neat whiskey—to blazes with Hogan’s careful plans, with the growing stack of forged papers and hand-sewn civilian suits hidden in a false-bottomed trunk. He could go, he could _go_ ; there was nothing stopping him, not anymore.

Or else... he could pack the tiny crevice with mud and turn around, report back to his CO and his friends, the way he was supposed to. He bit his lip, torn, even as he was pouring the last of his drinking water into the bucket of dirt and beginning to plaster the hole closed. Because so long as they were in limbo, balanced between the harsh reality of being prisoners in truth and the mad possibilities of being agents merely playing the part of prisoners for reasons of camouflage, so long as the tunnel was not yet operational, he didn’t have to make any final decisions. He didn’t have to decide how far he trusted the American officer, nor how much he was willing to risk. Because he still didn’t know. He truly did not know.

But the tunnel was, to all intents and purposes, finished. That meant that he, Richmond, could conceivably choose to leave. And somehow, that very fact trapped him more thoroughly than the German war machine ever had.


End file.
